Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
As Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg continue to reinvent the social network, a group of international entrepreneurs are inspiring launched a campaign protecting society from the control and influence of billionaires.
initiative, Our free contentits purpose is to protect Bluesky’s technology, AT Protocol, and use it to create a social network that cannot be controlled by a single person or company, including Bluesky itself.
The purpose of the plan is to establish a foundation of public interest that can provide funds for the creation of new social networks that can work on the AT Protocol, and build an independent infrastructure to support these new platforms, even if Bluesky could end. hands of billions.
The campaign comes after a week Meta announced that it was suspending the investigation and loosening its administrative rules. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is publicly traded, but Mark Zuckerberg controls the company through his ownership of high-voting shares, making it difficult for shareholders to oust him or push for changes. It also comes as Bluesky has seen a recent surge in users who moved from X (formerly Twitter) after its owner Elon Musk used the platform to promote the campaign of President Donald Trump and other political causes, including the right-wing AfD party in Germany.
Release Our Food was founded with the help of several famous names, including actor Mark Ruffallo, director Alex Winter, author Cory Doctorow, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Mozilla Foundation President Mark Surman, and others.
Robin Berjon, an independent technology expert and one of the “directors” of the project, told TechCrunch that Free Our Feeds is the result of discussions that he and other founding members had in exploring ways to promote social change and electronic devices. work.
“If you think about our roads, if all the roads were one or two billion, and they could tax, decide who is allowed to go where, etc., then we would be in trouble,” said Berjon. “And the digital infrastructure is not, as you know, as big and in your face as the street maybe, but it works the same way. It has the same power, the exact same power. And mainly, what we are doing is to make sure that the digital tools, which by nature, are useful for people , is being run in the public interest.”
Although the group admits that it shares the same values as Bluesky, it believes that the company can be influenced by interest, and that if it ends up being controlled by many billions, users deserve other ways to support independent infrastructure. The group has been in contact with Bluesky, realizing that the network in the group supports their work to make the AT protocol billionea-proof.
Our Free Feed aims to raise $30 million over three years, and has an immediate goal of $4 million to recruit a small team and build independent infrastructure.
“The purpose of the working architecture is to ensure that the AT protocol underlying Bluesky can be open source,” Berjon said. “They have opened the source, people can use it. But because there is only one big group, that is Bluesky, there is no opposition, there is no one to ensure that it remains open. We want to use an independent architecture from Bluesky that is compatible with them, that supports all networks, so that they are not the only ones who have a big place there. The idea is to continue to raise money so that you can be a reliable expert in the place, and use the money to support other funds.”
Berjon says the AT Protocol is currently being used primarily for BlueSky, but it could also be used for other types of social media applications.
“Using that, you can create an Instagram analog, a Facebook analog, a Tiktok analog, or, you know, things that haven’t been created yet,” he said. “And that’s his goal. It’s not just about things. And when introducing these new features, you don’t have to restore user accounts or storage systems, etc. People can use their existing accounts with your new product, because it is compatible with the AT protocol. So we want to help people create these new apps. “
Free Food We aim to have an independent foundation set up and run by the end of the year. Berjon says that if the nonprofit doesn’t raise enough money, it will return the money.
