A cadre of tech founders and activists announced a new social-media focused foundation on Monday with the goal of raising $30 million to fund development of AT Protocol, the underlying technology powering growing social media network Bluesky. While you may not recognize any of the "technical advisors and custodians" organizing Free Our Feeds, you'll likely recognize plenty of the folks who signed an open letter in support of the new foundation: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, actor and activist Mark Ruffalo, writer Cory Doctorow and musician Brian Eno are all among the signatories.
Free Our Feed opens with a strong denouncement of Facebook and X in their current forms, calling Mark Zuckerberg's recent moves to ditch fact checkers and ease up on restrictions on hate speech "going full Musk."
"However, they remain a commercial company, and despite their best intentions they will come under the same pressures all businesses face: to maximise return to their investors. We know that to ultimately build out a social network ecosystem that will remain free from venture capital and billionaire capture it will take years and hundreds of millions of dollars—and much like when we first started towns, we made the first roads, and over time we built out a network, all operating as part of a social contract where people get to the share the benefits of access to those roads."
The open letter's references to Bluesky's creators eventually falling victim to the whims of venture capital may sound like a dig—and there's ample mistrust online around Bluesky thanks to its former connection to Jack Dorsey and investment from a company called Blockchain Capital—but it's actually in-line with Bluesky's mission statement since the beginning.
