It’s safe to say that most people on this planet are, to put it mildly, tired of the current billionaires who run the social media ecosystem. X is a hated mess. Meta is trying to become a hated mess. TikTok is probably on its way to disappearing. Social media is not that fun and useful anymore.
However, a group of celebrities and famous former Twitter users are trying to “save social media from being taken over by billionaires” by creating something called FreeOurFeeds. These people want to build a new social media ecosystem focused on the public good rather than profit-driven incentives, as reported by User Mag.
Among the famous people behind this project are actor Mark Ruffalo, actor and director Alex Winter, and science fiction writer and journalist Cory Doctorow. Brian Eno, as well as Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia), are also involved in the project. The plan is to create new social media applications based on the existing AT protocol, which is the decentralized framework on which Bluesky runs. This will supposedly give users significant control over their data, algorithms, and the entire online experience.
“Over the past two decades, the world has seen a handful of companies dictate our entire social media experience. Now, for the first time, we have the opportunity to rewrite the rules. Bluesky’s core technology, the AT protocol, can offer a new path for the social internet,” said Sherif Elsayed-Ali, executive director of the Future of Technology Institute.
There are some serious obstacles on this path. Bluesky is still backed by venture capital, so the team needs to raise money to ensure that the core technology is put “on an independent path so that the future of social media is free from the whims of any one company or group of billionaires.”
The foundation also needs money to start building critical infrastructure. Overall, the organization hopes to raise $30 million over the next three years. Currently, there is a GoFundMe that intends to raise an initial $4 million. The initial funds will be spent on establishing a public foundation that will try to make “the technology behind Bluesky completely resistant to billionaire takeover.”
