A group of nine technology leaders have formed a new group – Free Our Feeds – aiming to raise $30 million to create a decentralised social media platform, breaking free from the billionaire-owned, for-profit model of today.

The group did not mince their words or leave their reasoning up for much debate – the group directly called out Elon Musk (owner of X) and Mark Zuckerberg (founder and owner of Meta), accusing Zuckerberg of “going full Musk last week,” citing Meta’s new policies to roll back its fact checking rules.

Since Musks’ takeover of X, formally known as Twitter, in 2022, there has been an exodus of regular and high profile users alike, with spurts of exits aligning with different technical changes to the platform as well as perceived political moves from the South African owner of Tesla.

Musks’ burgeoning relationship with President-elect Donald Trump, and Zuckerberg’s rolling back of DEI and fact checking prerogatives on Meta platforms has lead to more disillusionment toward the social media platform owners.

While former Twitter users have converted to other platform’s, such as Bluesky and Mastadon (with even The Guardian leaving X permanently), there appears to be a market vacuum in terms of viable alternatives.

Not only are the platform owners’ politics facing scrutiny, but their platforms’ transforming functions have been called into question, leaving many social media users disillusioned toward the for-profit system.

Relying on advertisements for profit, Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram require user data which they then sell to advertisers for personalised ads, requiring this permission as a term of use.

When this condition was found in breach of the EU’s GDPR, Meta attempted a pay or consent model, forcing users to pay a premium for no ads, and no data harvesting.

As each company continues to work on their own perspective AI model, the harvesting of user data to train these models has come into sharp focus from users as well. X even faced a potential fine for not allowing users to opt out of their data being used to train the company’s AI, Grok.

All of this has contributed a general dissatisfaction with social media, but equally a sense of resignment – even the one of the world’s most popular messaging apps, WhatsApp, is owned by Zuckerberg.

As TikTok faces a potential ban in the US, X and Meta appear well placed to take political advantage of the incoming Trump regime despite their data harvesting practices, contribution to misinformation proliferation, and role in a youth mental health crisis.

These compounding factors seem to have laid the groundwork for fed-up technologists to launch an official scheme to fully decentralise social media, with Free Our Feeds proposal to fuel BlueSky’s Authenticated Transfer (AT) Protocol in an attempt to prevent ownership by a single entity of the new platform.

But what does their plan entail, and how would this even work?

A Social Media with No Owner

The nine technology leaders are by no means billionaires, but do come from lofty technical backgrounds.

The Free Our Feeds group aims to launch an independent foundation to fund Bluesky and help transform its AT Protocol into an “entire ecosystem of interconnected apps and different companies that have people’s interests at heart.”

While Bluesky has already built the technology to decentralise the platform itself from a technical perspective – more on that later – it remains a commercial company

The independent group made up of open technology experts is aiming to raise $30 million to create a foundation and get critical infrastructure up and running so the platform is not vulnerable to billionaires.

According to an open letter the group published, which has been signed by technologists and even celebrities, the funds will be used to support making Bluesky’s tech resistant to billionaire capture.

It also aims to build an independently hosted infrastructure to allow users, developers, and researchers full access to the platform’s content and data stream, no matter the company’s future prospects. This is related to the technical aspect of Bluesky’s system, and is integral to the democratisation of the service.

Further, the fund aims to help developers build more social applications on top of the open system to enable more varied options.

Currently, they are asking for $4 million to create the foundation and build the infrastructure that will make this decentralised alternative viable.

Recommended reading

• Bluesky Signups Surge in UK After Government Spat with Elon Musk
• Meta Delays AI Training in Europe Following Regulatory Concern
• X’s Default Data Harvesting for AI Model Under Regulatory Scrutiny

What is the AT Protocol, and How Does it Work?

Integral to the idea of a decentralised, open social media network is the AT Protocol, which relies on three parts: Personal Data Servers (PDS), which contain all account data, including what people post; Relays access, gather, and then transmit this data to App Views which organise this data into a view dependent on the selected app.

According to the model, PDS can be Relayed across multiple app views, meaning the way that information is indexed and moderated can be changed without any of that data being lost.

Essentially, the PDS will stay the same whether it is relayed to one app view or the other, meaning the system is open.

Bluesky is therefore just one App View possible, but users could use their same data – the same handle, profile picture, and content – across multiple platforms, in theory.

Bluesky is currently the only forum that runs a relay across the AT Protocol at the moment, though anyone would be able to run a new relay and app view with the dataset if Bluesky goes under.

Developing a relay is a massive undertaking, however, requiring capital and skill. Hence, the Free Our Feeds campaign.

The intiaitl $4 million ask on the group’s Go Fund Me aims to create this alternative relay outwith BlueSky’s control in order to ensure the data and social media options are truly decentralised.