This campaign aims to stop millionaires from controlling social media.

A new campaign aims to stop millionaires buying social media control speech. A group of personalities, including Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Marvel actor Mark Ruffalo, suggest adoption of the Bluesky protocol. The idea is to promote decentralized technology that can reduce the risks associated with the control of one person.

Days after Meta announced changes to its moderation policies, a group of technology and public policy experts launched a campaign to “save social media from being kidnapped by billionaires.” Known as “Free up our channels(free up our channels). This initiative aims to create an independent non-profit foundation dedicated to expand the implementation of the AT protocol.

“Bluesky is an opportunity to change the status quo. They have created the foundation for a new type of social network in which we will all have more voice, more power and more control,” they mention on their website. “But it will take independent funding and management to turn the technology behind Bluesky (the AT protocol) into something more powerful than a single application. We want to create an entire ecosystem of interconnected applications and different companies that take into account the interests of people. “

The campaign organizers intend raise $4 million in seed funding through crowdfundingas part of a larger goal of $30 million over the next three years. These funds will be used to create a fund. develop a second service using the AT protocol and fund third party projects based on the protocol.

The initiative promises to avoid another Twitter-like fiasco.

The initiative comes from concerns about concentration of power in existing social networks. Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, which made significant changes to the platform’s moderation policies and functionality, showed danger of absolute control. The same goes for Mark Zuckerberg, who a few days ago relaxed moderation and abandoned fact checking.

Our free channels highlight the need for user control over data, algorithms and online experience. The decentralized nature of the AT protocol will allow users to migrate between different platforms without losing their data or social connections. This contrasts with the current model, in which user data is typically locked into a single platform ecosystem.

“Over the past two decades, the world has inadvertently moved closer to a situation where a handful of companies dictate all of our social media activities,” said Sherif Elsayed-Ali, director of the Institute for Future Technologies. “Now, for the first time, we have the opportunity to rewrite the rules. The AT protocol could offer a new path for social networking.”

If Bluesky changes ownership, the protocol will remain in effect.

Foundation It is designed to work autonomouslywhich guarantees the viability of the protocol. This means that if Bluesky changes its development strategy or sells itself to a billionaire, the ecosystem of applications using AT will not be affected.

Organizers We assembled a group of “guardians” control over the creation and management of the fund. This group includes representatives from organizations such as the Mozilla Foundation, Avaaz, and the Social Web Foundation, which provide a variety of expertise and oversight. The campaign has received support from figures including Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, actor Mark Ruffalo and writer Shoshana Zuboff.

The organizers hope that the first alternative to Bluesky until the end of 2025. It’s hard to think that millions of X, Instagram or Facebook users would move to another social network, but investments in this technology will define the platforms of the next decade.