Details are scarce but glad to see Twitter behind this. This concept of a distributed social network has been discussed (and even worked on) in tech circles for a few years and needs to happen. Under this model, you would retain ownership of your data, identity (under a unified, open-sourced model) and how its presented with a common mechanism to connect, share, like, etc.

The tech is here to do it. Someone really needs to take control of the user experience which is critical to get mass adoption. However, Facebook would have little interest in supporting this and getting your average user to see the value and switch is a high bar. This should also require the use of REAL ID which I wrote about recently.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has revealed he wants to create an open standard for decentralized social media. And the goal will be to have Twitter conform to that 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,” Dorsey tweeted.

https://decrypt.co/14386/jack-dorsey-wants-to-decentralize-twitter