The campaign 'Free Our Networks' aims to protect Bluesky's technology from billionaires.

A group of international entrepreneurs and technology advocates has launched a campaign to protect social media from the domination and influence of large fortunes, in the context of the transformations being carried out by Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. This initiative, called Free Our Feeds, aims to safeguard the underlying technology of Bluesky, known as the AT Protocol, and use it to establish an open social media ecosystem that cannot be controlled by any person or entity, including Bluesky.

The primary objective is to create a public-interest foundation that finances the development of new interoperable social networks that can operate under the AT Protocol, as well as to build independent infrastructure that supports these new platforms, even if Bluesky comes under the control of millionaires. This campaign comes a week after Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced its decision to eliminate fact-checking and loosen its content moderation rules.

Meta is a publicly traded company, but Mark Zuckerberg holds significant control due to his supervoting shares, making it difficult for shareholders advocating for change to influence the company's management. This movement also occurs at a time when Bluesky has seen an influx of users migrating from X (formerly Twitter), following Musk's efforts to promote Donald Trump's presidential campaign and other political causes.

The Free Our Feeds campaign has the support of several well-known figures, including actor Mark Ruffalo, director Alex Winter, writer Cory Doctorow, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Robin Berjon, an independent technologist and one of the nine "caretakers" of the project, noted that this initiative arose from the need to explore alternatives to change the current dynamics of social media and digital infrastructure. Berjon compared the current digital landscape to a network of roads controlled by a few millionaires, explaining that both systems exhibit a similar concentration of power that could be detrimental.

While the founders value the principles of Bluesky, they believe that the platform could be vulnerable to venture capital pressure and that if it comes under the control of a millionaire, users deserve alternatives backed by independent infrastructure. The team has been in contact with Bluesky, emphasizing that the decentralized network supports their mission to preserve the openness of the AT Protocol.

Free Our Feeds aims to raise $30 million over the course of three years, with an immediate goal of $4 million to create an initial team and develop independent infrastructure. Berjon underscores that the purpose of this infrastructure is to ensure that the AT Protocol remains open. Although it is currently primarily used to build Bluesky, it could also lead to other social applications, facilitating the creation of analogs to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and other future innovations in an interoperable manner.

The intention of Free Our Feeds is to establish and launch the independent foundation before the end of the year, and if the necessary funds are not achieved, they commit to returning the money raised.