Jack Dorsey Announces Annual Grant of $1 Million to Signal Private Messenger

Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey said in a blog post on Tuesday that he will give a grant of $1 million (roughly Rs. 8 crore) per year to encrypted messaging app Signal, the first in a series of grants he plans to make to support "open internet development."

Social media should not be "owned by a single company or group of companies," and needs to be "resilient to corporate and government influence," Dorsey wrote in a post on Revue, a newsletter service owned by Twitter.

Back in October, Dorsey shared details on the development of the decentralised ‘Bluesky' social networking initiative that the former Twitter Co-Founder is working on. The protocol, which is currently being built, is testing features like account portability, algorithmic choice, and interoperation, according to Dorsey.

Bluesky will use the ‘Authentic Transfer Protocol' or the AT Protocol, Dorsey revealed at the time. As per an official statement, the AT Protocol of the Bluesky initiative integrates ideas from the latest decentralised technologies into a simple, fast, and open network.

At the time, a blog post said that the AT Protocol would allow users to identify themselves by compatible domain names like ‘@alice.com'. These domain names would be mapped to cryptographic URLs, and protect both the account and the user's data.

Bluesky's AT Protocol would also offer ‘Account Portability', allowing users to move their accounts from one provider to another without risking loss of their data. With this feature, Dorsey said that he aims to strip big corporations of their control on people's online identities.

Similarly, AT Protocol's ‘Algorithmic Choice' would allow Bluesky to move away from the present-day trend of algorithms dictating what users browse and see online, on social networks. Instead, users will be presented with an open market of algorithms to pick from, or opt for a 'no algorithm' model.