I wonder when people will realize that Twitter is not the enemy. I do believe in decentralized social networking, but some software package you throw on your web server doesn't seem like the solution. We need a new Internet protocol.
Even so, I wish this team luck and hope it to gain traction.
Due to their centralized nature, and the result of being located in the US as one of the largest communication platforms, Twitter has become the enemy. It was probably not their intention to become the enemy, but that's the consequence of being located on US soil and being one of the largest service providers (just as Facebook and Google have.)
When you decentralize, where providers are only responsible for a relative handful of the overall userbase, 'hoovering' is much more difficult.
I already know about its centralization and being in the US. So what? I don't put sensitive information into Twitter like I do in Google services.
Do you expect your blogging service to be encrypted and private too? I guess the private messages should be secure but oh well, I've even heard Twitter demanding warrants for giving out DM info.
Edit: I do wish we could expect "private messages" to be private.
Maybe I'm lost on the service, but why would anyone expect privacy from Twitter? After all, any company can open their wallets and get the firehose from Twitter in realtime. Why would the NSA be barred from that?
The idea behind decentralization isn't that it eliminates surveillance, but that it makes indiscriminate mass surveillance less easy, especially when combined with good cryptography.
Mass surveillance has existed in other societies without the help of today's technology, but technology, especially when it aggregates aggregates data in large hubs, makes it very easy.
It's not the protocols that are to blame (they're just contracts for how things talk to other things) for enabling mass surveillance, but the way we've structured our software and services.
Even so, I wish this team luck and hope it to gain traction.