On Monday, a group of tech company founders and activists from the USA announced the creation of the Free Our Feeds fund, advocating for free social networks and raising funds to finance the development of the AT Protocol — a foundational technology that supports the growth of the social network Bluesky.
In addition to representatives from the tech industry, the fund’s activists include notable figures such as actor Mark Ruffalo and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.
Free Our Feeds harshly criticizes Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) in their current forms, mentioning Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal of a fact-checking system and Elon Musk’s relaxation of restrictions on hate speech.
“We are determined to free social media from billionaire control,” the open letter states. “We know that three things are needed: community, capital, control. For the first time in history, there is a path that ensures the future of social media in the public interest. The Bluesky team has created an incredible foundation for this vision — a system that returns power and choice to people through individual control and customization.”
Bluesky — a project that originated within the walls of Twitter as the development of a decentralized social network protocol, also known as AT Protocol. In 2021, Bluesky separated from its parent company and hired its first employees, and from 2022 has been operating in beta by invitation (from February 2024 the social network is available to everyone without invitations).
Currently, the service is available through iOS and Android apps, and like Twitter, primarily focuses on microblogging. The social network is managed by Jay Graber, and the board of directors includes Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and XMPP creator Jeremy Miller.
“One of Bluesky’s mottos is ‘the company is the future enemy,'” explained Bluesky developer Emily Liu in 2023.
The new fund’s activities will primarily focus on the development of the AT Protocol, which supports the operation of Bluesky and could theoretically be used to create a new wave of interconnected social platforms, offering non-corporate alternatives to services like Facebook and Linkedin.
Bluesky documents state that the AT Protocol provides a “unified” network and allows servers to “communicate with each other like email,” among the advantages are also the ability to easily transfer your account from one provider to another, control over your own feed algorithms, etc.
Free Our Feeds is expected to be operational “by the end of 2025,” but it is already collecting donations through GoFundMe with a goal of $4 million, which will go towards “the creation of the fund and the launch of critical infrastructure.”
Source: PC Gamer
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