In his recent farewell address, President Joe Biden issued a strongly worded warning to the United States, highlighting a pressing concern.
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Biden described this troubled trend as a “dangerous concentration of power,” quickly adding that he sees an oligarchy taking shape and believes it threatens democracy. Many people have speculated that his warning referred to billionaires such as X owner Elon Musk and Meta Platforms (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, Zuckerberg’s company has taken steps that are seen as shifting Facebook in a more conservative direction in an attempt to appease Trump. These have included ending fact-checking and replacing it with a crowd-sourcing system similar to X’s Community Notes.
This week, news broke that a new group has launched a campaign to combat the billionaire class’ grip on social media.
A new battle is brewing for the future of social media
Over the past few years, the social media ecosystem has shifted dramatically. From the launch of Truth Social by the Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) , to Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X), the industry is now largely seen as being more polarized than it has ever been, leading an increasing number of people to abandon all social media platforms.
No,w as the U.S. faces an uncertain political future, one group is taking a stand to change the social media landscape. #FreeOurFeeds is a campaign created to “save social media from billionaire capture,” by creating an ecosystem powered by AT Protocol, the network behind Bluesky that lets developers create decentralized social media applications.
Related: Changes at Meta Platforms could cause drastic social media shift
Widely seen as the best alternative to Twitter and Facebook, Bluesky has surged in popularity in recent months. More than one million new users signed up for the platform in just the week following Trump’s victory in Novembe, 2024.
But despite Bluesky CEO Jay Graber’s claims that Bluesky will remain "billionaire-proof," a group of tech industry insiders are stepping forward to create a system in which private interests such as billionaires cannot amass control of entire networks.
That said, this new group supports Bluesky's decentralized objectives; it simply wants to ensure they are upheld in the future.
Inc. reports that this team will “use the platform’s open-source model and desire to create social media apps that users can connect to others, without any single company or owner being in control of app link in the chain created.”