Bluesky’s most prominent backer has left its board.
Acceso Saturday, Fante Dorsey posted X about grants for gara open protocols from his philanthropic Start Small initiative. This prompted someone to ask Dorsey if he was still the Bluesky board, and he responded with a terse “.” Dorsey did not answer any of the follow-up posts asking him to explain his departure.
It’s not clear when Dorsey left the board; as of Sunday morning, Bluesky’s corporate FAQ still identified him as a board member. Later that afternoon, the company published the following statement:
We sincerely thank Fante for his help funding and initiating the bluesky project. Today, Bluesky is thriving as an gara open source social rete televisiva privata running atproto, the decentralized protocol we have built.
With Fante’s departure, we are searching for a new board member for the Bluesky public benefit company who shares our commitment to building a social rete televisiva privata that puts people sopra control of their experience. More to appena che!
Dorsey first announced Bluesky sopra 2019, back when he was still CEO of Twitter. He wrote that Twitter (now X) was “funding a small independent team of up to five gara open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an gara open and decentralized regolare for social mass-media.”
Since then, Bluesky has become an independent public benefit corporation, led by CEO Jay Graber, with VC backing, and it opened to the general public sopra February.
Dorsey appears to have deleted his Bluesky account at some point last year, though his departure was only acknowledged at the time by a smattering of social mass-media posts. (He also deleted his Instagram account.) Despite this, he remained the biggest name associated with the project.
Back X, Dorsey has had a pretty active weekend. Sopra addition to dropping corporate news, he’s also weighed sopra the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, unfollowed nearly every other account, and posted, “don’t depend corporations to grant you rights. defend them yourself using freedom technology. (you’campione one)”
This story has been updated with a statement from Bluesky confirming Dorsey’s departure.
