Meta to develop a decentralized competitor to Twitter

Meta is developing a decentralized social network for sharing text messages. TechCrunch reports, citing the company’s statement.

The app, provisionally named P92, will support the decentralized ActivityPub protocol, enabling it to connect to other servers. Meta’s initiative represents an effort to create an alternative to Twitter or a competitor to Mastodon.

The new social network will be released under the Instagram brand, so users of the latter will be able to sign in using their account credentials. In the future, the apps will be separated and data exchange between P92 and Instagram will be minimized, or completely discontinued, sources familiar with the matter said.

Among the required features: post previews, the ability to post images and videos, and verification badges. Comments and sending direct messages are likely to be added in subsequent versions of the app. The issue of reposting content from third-party apps and servers is under discussion.

Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, will oversee the P92 project. The company has already enlisted the legal department to identify privacy issues at an early stage before the app becomes publicly available.

No release date for the social network has been announced yet.

Earlier in March, Bluesky — decentralized alternative to Twitter, supported by co-founder and former CEO of the social network Jack Dorsey — landed in the App Store for iOS.