A group of celebrities, tech industry leaders, and digital rights activists, including actor Mark Ruffalo and author Cory Doctorow, have launched an ambitious FreeOurFeeds campaign to transform social media into a public good, free from commercial interests and political censorship, UserMag reports. The initiative aims to create an open, decentralized social media ecosystem that prioritizes user control, transparency, and community well-being.
The project is based on AT Protocol, an open protocol used by Bluesky, a platform founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. FreeOurFeeds intends to extend this technology by creating a network of interconnected social media apps and services based on a non-profit organization, giving users more control instead of handing over power to corporations.
“This is the moment to reclaim social media,” said technical expert and project curator Robin Berjon. “As we did with the creation of public roads and shared spaces in our towns, we must invest in digital infrastructure that operates under a social contract — benefiting everyone, not just the few.”
The FreeOurFeeds team plans to raise $30 million over the next three years, starting with an initial $4 million to establish the fund and launch critical infrastructure. The funds raised will help build independent servers to ensure continuous access to Bluesky data streams regardless of corporate solutions, and support a variety of developers in creating new social applications based on open protocols.
"What’s so exciting here is a clear pathway to large-scale social media controlled by its users, not by fickle billionaires or advertisers," said Eli Pariser, one of the project's curators and founder of New_Public.
The campaign has been backed by notables such as Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor who later became a critic of Big Tech, and Alex Winter, a filmmaker and digital rights activist. Their goal is to move away from the profit-driven models that have come to dominate platforms like Meta and X (formerly Twitter), which FreeOurFeeds describes as "censorship hellholes" that amplify right-wing voices and silence marginalized communities.
Sherif Elsayed-Ali, Executive Director of the Institute for Future Technologies, emphasized that the campaign is aimed at protecting Bluesky's core technology from corporate takeover. “As it stands, [Bluesky] is still venture-capital backed. This important initiative aims to safeguard Bluesky’s underlying technology and put it on an independent pathway, so that the future of social media can be freed from the whims of any one company or group of billionaires.”
FreeOurFeeds also highlights the growing frustration with the centralized corporate control of social media, which critics say has become a tool for achieving personal goals and corporate agendas. The project envisions a future where users regain control of digital spaces.
Despite its ambitions, the path forward for FreeOurFeeds remains challenging. The team must raise significant funds in a market dominated by venture capital and convince users to switch from platforms like Meta and X, which store years of content and social connections.