⚡Dorsey
Good Morning! If you missed yesterday’s, you can find it here.
Feeling sentimental about the human condition this morning. I thought the quote above did a good job at referring to the near infinitude of an individual’s experience. What people carry with them. What they’ve left behind. What they’re moving towards.
Anyways, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting as the year is coming to an end and like anyone, I’ve been dosing myself with holiday jams. Supposedly, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” was streamed 45 million times last week. Pushed it up to No 1 on Billboard Hot 100 for the first time. It’s a humorous reminder that we can always reach new heights. 🤓
We’re going to be taking off starting the 23rd and will be back on the 6th. We’re hoping to do some revamping on the type of content and the format we deliver it in. We’re looking forward to sharing it all with you soon!
- Jon
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Here’s a few things that have been on our mind:
Jack’s going to decentralize Twitter
This is a continuation on our conversation on social media and access.
Refresher. A few months ago, we were doing a lot of coverage on FB and Democracy. We touched on The Access Act, a new proposal fighting to open up the data and information markets in web platforms.
Summary.
This gives users more control and is a public solution to the problems of social media.
Here’s a private solution:
A recent update in the social media world. CEO Jack Dorsey wants to create an open standard for decentralized social media. Afterwards, he wants Twitter to conform to that new standard.
"Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard.”
Jack Dorsey
Bluesky. Fancy projects should come with fancy (& aspirational) project names. Twitter’s CTO Parag Agrawal will be leading the new team called Bluesky.
Why. The web is broken and the problems are systemic. Dorsey believes that centralized social media sites face inherit problems, especially ones that can address misleading information. He believes many of these sites promote controversy rather than healthy conversation.
Solution. He believes decentralization could be a way to rewire the web, but that it’s going to be a challenge.
"There are MANY challenges to make this work that Twitter would feel right becoming a client of this standard. Which is why the work must be done transparently in the open, not owned by any single private corporation, furthering the open & decentralized principles of the internet.
Rewiring social. But actually, how would this make our experiences better?
No echo chamber. Centralized platforms have all the control over what data is seen. In decentralized social media, the algorithms to sort content would be publicly available and adjustable. This could give all news equal opportunity to go viral.
Personal data is yours. The hope is that people will not only control their data but own it.
But show me the money. The largest and best dispute against decentralized social networks is monetization. How will it keep itself afloat? The few models that are already out there have struggled to gain the critical mass to be sustainable.
This will be really interesting. We don’t know if this is another way Dorsey is taking a jab at Zuck, but how Bluesky builds the new standards will be fascinating. It would set precedent to move other private and massive social networks over to a decentralized model, giving users greater agency. We’ve said this before, but social media as it is now is broken because of its incentive structures. When the users are the product, eventually you’ll reach a point where you’re not building an experience that optimizes the user’s wellbeing. And we’re rooting for all the ways that this can change.
“Betrayed the Nation”
The House Judiciary Committee released a very long report (169 pages) about impeachment.
Their position. Trump poses “a threat to the Constitution” if he remains in office.
Moderates backing impeachment. So far the remaining uncommitted moderate Democrats are starting to announce how they will vote. The two most interesting positions:
Elissa Slotkin (Michigan) said she will vote to impeach even though many told her the vote “will mark the end of [her] short political career.”
Jeff Van Drew (New Jersey) said no. Five members of his staff resigned over the weekend amid reports that he’ll switch his party registration to Republican.
We haven’t written much about impeachment here, even though we think it’s important to keep updated. We assumed you’re probably getting hit with this news everywhere else. Recently, some members of COP25 stated that they believe the next election will be important to how the global community acts to curb the climate crisis. The impeachment in that sense, has a new level of importance to our community, so we’ll start to cover this a little more closely from the lens of how the US needs to champion carbon emission reduction and global standards.
UN Council and Kashmir
At China’s request, the UN Security Council will begin discussing the situation in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Looking a few months back. Since August, Kashmir has been under lockdown and denied internet access. India’s Hindu nationalist government scrapped Article 370, which granted Kashmir limited autonomy.
A letter to the council. On Dec 12, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi expressed his concerns that this would lead to an escalation of tensions.
History. This area has been a point of tension between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, India and Pakistan. They both claim rights to Kashmir. Since 1946, UN peacekeepers have been deployed to observe a ceasefire in the territory. For decades, India has been battling an armed rebellion within the portion it controls, blaming Pakistan for supporting them, but Pakistan claims they only give moral support to non-violent separatists.
We’re looking to build something that helps keep track of global conflicts. There’s so much news, we think it’s important to produce more and more curated and simplified versions that help showcase the bigger picture. It’ll help inspire more changemakers as people will be able to see where they can create impact as complexity is reduced.
Let us know if you know of anyone who’d like to partner or get involved.
Short takes
A perspective: Should ethical companies be forced to keep their promises or get sued?
A perspective. Michael Bloomberg wants to be the climate change candidate, but a new generation of climate activists have other ideas.
Egg cartons the next to be replaced? A new packaging concept to make these reusable.
Mitt Romney and Michael Bennet just released a basic income plan for kids.
Tomorrow Today
🎟️ We’re thinking February 6th! We’ll have a sign up link and more details soon.
Change cannot be achieved alone, only together. In that spirit, we are hosting community events at our space in New York City. Eat some food, learn from some seasoned, unconventional activists, and meet others aspiring to change the world!
Why are we hosting this?
For us, community is the center of everything. In an age of prolific digitization, there's a great need for greater human connection. It's almost necessary to carve out time and space to purposefully engage in person. While it's amazing to be able to discuss and interact with multiple people online and exchange stories and insights, we don't think anything beats the experience of sharing a meal.
Igniting Tomorrow
💰 $100k-$250k Pre-Seed Funding
UPDATE: We’ve already had multiple people reach out and share their ideas. It gets us super excited to learn more about the projects and companies everyone is working on. Please keep reaching out. We’ll be releasing more information around this in the upcoming year.
Many of you are either already working on a number of world-changing things or have ideas bursting out of you every day. Our goal is to see unconventional activists like you succeed. Let us help connect you into the space and access the financing you need to get started. If you’d like to share your ideas (or know a friend working on something exciting), please reply to this email!
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