Meta is looking to launch its own, Twitter-like social app, which will be focused on short, text-based updates. This comes in the wake of many user disappointments since Musk’s takeover of the app in October 2022.
Most interestingly, the app, currently entitled ‘P92’, would be decentralised, aligning with the new wave social media push. The project will reportedly incorporate support for decentralised social networking protocol ActivityPub, which would be Meta’s first step into the decentralised social media space. Which is a big step – Meta, in large part, is the reason why there’s been such a big push towards decentralisation, due to the way that it’s gathered and controlled user data and experiences.
Now, Meta could lead the way in the next phase towards web3 which makes sense, given that Meta is always working to latch onto every new trend. But it could be a significant variance in approach for the company.
P92 wouldn’t be the first attempt at a Twitter alternative. Mastodon, to Post, to Spill, T2, and various others have launched recently and a key focus of all of these alternative platforms has been to embed the lessons learned from social networks past. This has seen some looking to institute alternative moderation systems from the get-go, in order to avoid the complications of bias and perceived censorship, while there’s also been a bigger push towards data portability and the capacity to take your information with you to other platforms, if you so choose.
