Jack Dorsey ,the CEO of Twitter said that the company  plans to set up an independent research group to create an “open and decentralized” system for social networks which could relieve pressure on the company to appease critics of its content policies but also give rise to a new crop of competitors.

Centralized solutions are struggling to meet many new challenges faced by social networks, including large scale content moderation, Dorsey said, adding that the new standard will not be owned by any single private corporation.

“Centralized enforcement of global policy to address abuse and misleading information is unlikely to scale over the long-term without placing far too much burden on people,” he tweeted

The system, or “standard,” would not be owned by any single private company, and would enable individuals to use a variety of services to access the same network, just like they choose different email providers to see the same messages.

Policing speech on social media sites has required hefty investments while still failing to stem criticism from users who find the policies either too aggressive or too lax.

He said the new approach would also allow Twitter to “focus our efforts on building open recommendation algorithms which promote healthy conversation, and will force us to be far more innovative than in the past.” The idea, as outlined in articles Dorsey shared, is that developers could use their own algorithms to offer like-minded individuals targeted access to the same social media networks.

The open standard, however, could upend Twitter’s business model in the process, giving rise to competitor services that offer filters, content suggestions or other tools that prove more popular with consumers.

Twitter Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal will be in charge of hiring a lead for the research team, called Bluesky, Dorsey said, while acknowledging that the project would take many years to complete.

Dorsey went on to explain how blockchain technology can provide a model for decentralizing content hosting, oversight and even monetization of social media.