Free Our Feeds Wants To Build A Social Media Ecosystem ‘resistant To Billionaire Influence’

Technology advocates and celebrities are backing nan motorboat ofOur Feeds, a tally designed to “save societal media from billionaire capture.” The task intends to raise $30 cardinal complete 3 years to support nan betterment of a societal media ecosystem powered by nan AT Protocol, aliases nan decentralized web powering Bluesky.

The raised costs will spell toward launching a nationalist liking instauration to support nan project, while creating an “independently hosted infrastructure” giving Bluesky users, developers, and researchers entree to nan contented and accusation posted “no matter what nan institution decides to do successful nan future.”

After starting arsenic a investigation task nether erstwhile Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Bluesky became an independent institution successful 2021 and went connected to create nan AT Protocol, an open-source infrastructure that intends to create a societal ecosystem pinch interoperable apps. Bluesky built its ain societal web atop nan framework, raising millions successful costs and attracting a increasing number of users.

Despite these efforts,Our Feeds believes “social infrastructure tally successful nan nationalist liking cannot beryllium governed by a backstage societal media company” forever.

“Bluesky’s underlying technology, nan AT Protocol, could relationship a caller pathway for nan societal web. Yet arsenic it stands, it is still venture-capital backed,” Wikipedia co-founder andOur Feeds protagonist Jimmy Wales said successful a statement. “This important inaugural intends to safeguard Bluesky’s underlying exertion and put it connected an independent pathway, truthful that nan early of societal media tin beryllium freed from nan whims of immoderate 1 institution aliases group of billionaires.”

Free Our Feeds will beryllium led by 9 custodians — including nan Mozilla Foundation’s Nabiha Syed and Mark Surman — who will oversee nan project’s “major governance decisions.”

Mastodon is too moving distant from nan azygous ownership exemplary utilized by societal platforms for illustration Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Elon Musk’s X. On Monday, Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko announced that he will proscription nan ownership of nan decentralized societal web to a nonprofit connection because “Mastodon should not beryllium owned aliases controlled by a azygous individual.”

With Meta making drastic changes to its contented moderation policy, and X’s translator nether Musk’s ownership, theOur Feeds task couldn’t recreation astatine a amended clip — moreover if it mightiness return immoderate clip for its efforts to recreation to fruition.