Billionaire-proof Bluesky campaign launched to keep the likes of Elon Musk out

Tech experts and advocates have banded together to try and keep Bluesky a billionaire-free zone, ensuring it's free from a single individual (including Elon Musk who took over X/Twitter) or company running it.

For the blissfully unaware, Bluesky is an emerging decentralised social media platform similar to the set-up of X. Created by original Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Bluesky aims to give users more control over their online experiences, including the ability to moderate content, set rules, and even create their own algorithms.

The 'Free Our Feeds' campaign has already secured backing from a range of well-known supporters, including author Cory Doctorow, director Alex Winter, actor Mark Ruffalo, Mozilla Foundation president Mark Surman, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and more.

"We can no longer let billionaires control our digital public square," the campaign's website states. "Free Our Feeds will build a new, independent foundation to help make that happen.

"This isn't just about bolstering one new social media platform. Our vision offers a pathway to an open and healthy social media ecosystem that cannot be controlled by any company or billionaire."

The campaign seeks to raise $30 million over the next three years to establish a foundation supporting Bluesky, with the goal of creating an "independently hosted infrastructure." This would ensure that Bluesky’s users, developers, and researchers can access content and data posted on the platform, regardless of any future decisions made by the company.

'Free Our Feeds' is led by Mozilla execs, Social Web Foundation, and other tech nonprofits.

It comes after Mark Zuckerberg was criticised for "trying to be Elon Musk" for ditching fact-checkers for community notes.

In a video shared to his social media platforms, the billionaire said it was "time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram."

He explained: "After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth, but fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the US."

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