Entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban is able to fund a TikTok different constructed on Bluesky’s AT Protocol, he shared in a TikTok video posted on Wednesday. In anticipation of the approaching U.S. TikTok ban, which can undergo on Sunday until paused by the Supreme Court, customers have been fleeing to different video platforms, together with the Chinese app RedNote. But traders like Cuban see the potential for a extra open social net that features an ecosystem of apps powered by the identical expertise that immediately underpins Bluesky’s social community.
The AT Protocol is a more moderen, open protocol designed for decentralized social media functions. It’s meant to deal with what some builders thought have been shortcomings with the prevailing decentralized protocol ActivityPub, utilized by Mastodon and different social companies. While Bluesky is the AT Protocol’s flagship app in the interim, there are various different companies now being constructed with the expertise.
Consumer demand for open social apps can also be in full swing, with Bluesky itself seeing a surge of recent signups within the wake of the U.S. presidential elections, rising the community to 27.6+ million customers, up from 10 million+ in September. Meanwhile, on Wednesday we broke the information of a coming Bluesky shopper known as Flashes that will concentrate on pictures over textual content.
Cuban says he’d wish to see — and again — one thing that rivals TikTok however is constructed on the AT Protocol.
In the video, he briefly describes how ATProto (because it’s known as for brief) permits individuals to create their very own social networking servers and apps.
Then he provides, “I might be open to investing in supporting anyone — or any individual who creates a TikTok substitute constructed on the AT Protocol. So when you’ve received that potential, let me know within the feedback. If you create an MVP — a minimal viable product — so I can see it, that’s all the higher, as a result of clearly, I believe you’d have a complete lot of assist,” Cuban says.
“And extra importantly, once you construct on the AT Protocol, it’s extensible, so which means no one can simply purchase it, no one can simply shut it,” the investor notes, in reference to the account portability features of constructing for the open social net.
That is, customers who need to transfer their account to a different server can accomplish that with out dropping their followers, content material, and different information.
In half, Cuban’s curiosity in ATProto isn’t solely about increasing the open social net; it’s additionally about fueling competitors with Elon Musk’s X. Cuban has overtly feuded with Musk on X and elsewhere, criticizing X’s strategy to content material moderation, misinformation, and extra.
Cuban requested builders to reply within the feedback of the TikTok submit.
