Actor Mark Ruffalo might soon be your favourite celebrity, if he wasn’t already.
After a brief respite when Zuckerberg looked like he might finally get it right with Threads, social media is feeling more toxic than ever.
Celebrities are just as fed up with that as the rest of us, it seems, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. In many ways, social media is an even greater escape for them than it is for us mere mortals.
Add to that the fact that most actors tend to be left of centre, and that’s probably how this has come about: FreeOurFeeds, a new movement led by celebs like Mark Ruffalo, Alex Winter, Cory Doctorow (author of some of my all-time fave novels), Brian Eno, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
“With Zuckerberg going full Musk last week, we can no longer let billionaires control our digital public square,” the group says. See their full statement at the bottom of this post.
Their goal? Build public-good social media platforms using the decentralised AT Protocol (the tech behind Bluesky) to give users more control over their data and experience.
They face a big challenge, though: funding.
To break free from billionaire influence, they reckon they need $30 million USD ($45m AUD) over three years, starting with a $4 million ($6m AUD) GoFundMe to create a foundation protecting this tech from corporate control.
And no, even wealthy celebs don’t stack up to billionaires – the wealthiest fella in the group, Ruffalo, is supposedly worth around $30 million ($44m AUD). That’s a pile of cash you’d barely see if you dropped it next to Elon Musk’s $415 billion ($612b AUD) or Zuckerberg’s ~$220 billion ($350b AUD).
Yep, even multimillionaires look broke next to billionaires.
And really, if you look at the list of signatories, Ruffalo is the only conventional celebrity mentioned. (Well, for those too young to remember the Bill & Ted movies.)
The rest are significant people, but I wonder if that’ll be enough…
⌁ via Taylor Lorenz
The Free Our Feeds ‘manifesto’
With Zuckerberg going full Musk last week, we can no longer let billionaires control our digital public square.
Bluesky is an opportunity to shake up the status quo.
They have built scaffolding for a new kind of social web. One where we all have more say, choice and control.
But it will take independent funding and governance to turn Bluesky’s underlying tech—the AT Protocol—into something more powerful than a single app. We want to create an entire ecosystem of interconnected apps and different companies that have people’s interests at heart.
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.
Join the movement to liberate social media. Will you donate?
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