How To Stop Billionaires From Dominating The Discourse
The Free Our Feeds movement is a real chance to claw power back from Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
In a period that feels lost to history, yet somehow was not that long ago, the world witnessed firsthand the power of social media as a catalyst for societal change – the good kind.
2010 saw a monumental protest movement in the Middle East and parts of Africa, where uprisings challenged, and in some circumstances toppled existing power structures long considered immovable forces of repression. We know this now as the Arab Spring, and it's among the most important chapters in the history of our relationship with social apps. While the true lasting effects can certainly be debated, as well as the non-uniformity of social media as a catalyst, it showed everyone who was paying attention just how valuable these lines of communication are.
Regimes in power during the Arab Spring would attempt to quell the uprisings by shutting down this line of communications; Egypt famously first shut down Facebook and Twitter, and followed up by shutting down the networks that handled nearly all internet traffic in the country. It backfired, because it halted communications for everyone, not just protestors, and essentially alerted the disengaged citizenry of the force and tenacity the government was using to quash dissent. Fast forward a few years, and the newly elected authoritarian government in the United States has decided to take a different approach to keep its citizens in line. Why shut down the conversation when you have the power to manipulate it?
Shutting down social networks in 2010 made too many waves, created too much popular discontent, and had the effect of broadcasting nefarious intent to all citizens. A more discrete method was necessary, not just to maintain power, but to seize control of as many aspects of the government as possible. This could be done by selling social media users on the idea of “free speech,” a bad-faith cudgel for the international fascist movement.
Everyone loves free speech after all.
As is true in sales, perception is as important, if not more important, than reality. It doesn’t matter what you are buying, it matters what you think you are buying. The seller doesn’t care what you think about it once the transaction is complete, assuming there is no refund policy and it’s not a recurring purchase. They only need you to buy it once, and the damage is done.
The “sale” in question – as touted by Elon Musk – was the promise of a digital town square where free speech reigns supreme. This was necessary, we were told, because scheming Democrats in government were violating our First Amendment rights by attempting to regulate content on these privately owned social media platforms that largely control public opinion. Obviously this does not amount to a violation of anyone's rights according to any constitutional amendment. But it's a nice little bad faith story to tell so right-wing actors had reason to actually censor speech in the digital townhall, as Musk has on his fascism machine.
This begs the question: If we didn’t buy free speech (for a monthly subscription), and protection from the (woke) government in its never ending quest to silence free expression of thought (about how your life’s problems are caused by immigrants and trans people), what did we buy?
In the process of letting taxpayer money subsidize Musk’s purchase of Twitter (he has to run it through another business entity first), what we bought was the most powerful propaganda machinery humanity has ever seen. Instead of a communication network that could be used freely by people around the world, one that in its short history has served as a vehicle for organizing against existing power structures built by murderous dictators, we now have a communications network personally controlled by an oligarch who would have been largely sympathetic to the regimes the platform previously helped to topple. We know this, because he is sympathetic to authoritarian regimes around the world, and is himself a craven, extremely-divorced fascist.
Denny Carter
Remember, these people are all largely the same, they merely exist in different societies.
I wrote in November about how Bluesky can save democracy due to its decentralized nature and structural resistance to a single figure who might be hellbent on steering the world's discourse in a direction favorable to him while mainstreaming dangerous political thought. That feeling has only strengthened since the election, as we’ve seen leader after leader of the top tech companies sheepishly stick their tails between their legs and arrive at Mar-A-Lago on bent knees, eager to kiss Big Daddy's ring.
It is a pathetic attempt to curry favor with someone more powerful, and it reeks of weakness. TikTok was so desperate to get the new U.S. fascist government on board, they voluntarily shut their service off for a few hours so they could attribute a comeback to Donald Trump, despite the fact that he was one of the loudest voices saying it needed to be banned in the first place. In the end he wasn’t serious, once he was able to get something out of the deal, a trait typical of those who view life strictly as a long series of transactions.
Unlike when a billionaire’s reputation takes a hit, however, the effects it will have on the rest of us who continue to use their propaganda machines as if they are free forms of communication and expression have the potential to do lasting harm to society.
This threat is serious enough that a movement to fund and develop the AT Protocol, the social media framework upon which Bluesky was built, has taken shape with some powerful players showing interest. Unlike Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, Zuckerberg's stewardship of Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Threads), or the hijacking of TikTok by Trump and his forces, the push to fund the AT Protocol is a move that can insulate us from the damage that will undoubtedly occur the next time a billionaire-tech-bro-turned-divorced-masculinity-expert decides to be the final arbiter of what content you see online, of how your reality is shaped.
Decentralization: The Enemy Of Musk And Zuckerberg
The AT (Authenticated Transfer) Protocol is what's known as a federated network. It’s a group of servers connected on the same network, where no single party is in charge. Authority and management is decentralized across participants. Once authenticated, you can transfer your entire social media network to a different application if you choose to, Bluesky is merely the vehicle you were using to get to the network. They add the name “protocol” so it sounds like an intimidating concept to normies but it's really not complicated; it's an idea you’ve likely come into contact in some aspect of your life. If you are of the age to have downloaded music from Napster, LimeWire, and various other p2p file sharing networks, you were doing business on a decentralized network while destroying your parents' computer. Napster was simply an interface to access and use the network; it had no control over the participants or what they shared with each other.
Decentralization of power is an important concept to grasp as we move forward in this crony capitalism broligarchy hell we find ourselves in. What used to be thought of as a belief system mostly reserved for cypherpunk circles has actually been near the forefront of tech for quite a while, as it's the concept behind Bitcoin and many other attempts to create a monetary system that exists outside of any singular government or controlling party. Many cryptocurrencies are not decentralized, not cryptographically secured, do not operate on a fundamental level like Bitcoin does, and are simply money grabs that give the entire industry a justifiably scammy reputation.
The scam king discovers the scam to end all scams.
The experience from the user perspective is usually no different, but the infrastructure being used is fundamentally different in a way that gives an illusion of decentralization while serving the interests of a small group of people. If that sounds familiar, you only need to swap two or three words to change that into the story of Elon Musk buying Twitter and transforming it into the world’s foremost fascist propaganda machine. It's the same bait and switch.
The genuine desire to decentralize power of currency (or communication) is indeed real, however, and held strongly by many. Both of these things can be true at the same time.
Old Twitter, while being led by Jack Dorsey, is where the AT Protocol concept was first born and initially built. In case you’ve ever wondered how Bluesky managed to replicate the feel of pre-Musk Twitter, it's because the same people worked on both projects. Dorsey didn’t believe “anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company.” And that’s the ethos that led to the creation of the AT Protocol and the Bluesky app that serves as an interface to use it. Before you rush to crown Dorsey as the champion for digital freedom, or a protector from a social media landscape being controlled by any single person or small, terrible group of people, it’s worth noting that the only person he felt would be fit to run Twitter was Musk, and “his mission to extend the light of consciousness” was deemed as trustworthy. Musk has since used his power to overthrow western democracies.
This is an important detail of this story of social media, not to dial in on your opinion of Dorsey as having been a fool or a fascist sympathizer, but to remember that even the people you believe are good and well meaning are ultimately fallible. Digital decentralization is an acknowledgement that no one person is always going to be right, or do the right thing, that we are not angels.
Recently, there has been a push from a handful of powerful players in and adjacent to the tech industry to secure serious funding for the AT Protocol. The goal is strengthening the social media landscape that falls outside the traditional model, where a single person or group of people dictates what content is acceptable after clearing it with the United States government. The Free Our Feeds movement, composed of believers in digital privacy and open source software, aims to raise the funds to build out and maintain the decentralized infrastructure on which Bluesky and other social media applications can operate.
The Free Our Feeds advocates aren’t looking to purchase Bluesky or any other application, but rather to enhance the “scaffolding” these sites are built upon (they need money – and lots of it – to accomplish this). This distinction is incredibly important, and the fact that the difference isn’t going to be obvious to many people (especially people who aren't terminally online or filled with unnecessary knowledge about open source software concepts) is something that will be used by authoritarians and their hangers-on to muddy the conversation and keep as many people as possible on harmful, fascism-advancing platforms like Musk’s X. After all, it's your duty as a human being to listen to and think like the elitists, watch their advertisements, let them use your data to train their AI models well enough to take your jobs, as well as be convinced to buy into the latest memecoin.
The difference in network architecture makes all the difference. One doesn't need to know the first thing about programming to understand the difference in how they work, and there's only one option – AT protocol – suitable for a free society, one not captured by powerful, toxic interests. I find that in order to fully comprehend the difference, it's better to think about it in non-tech terms.
Facebook, Twitter, and any other social media network can be thought of as an independent hotel. You can stay at any of them for as long as you'd like, and, top some degree, set your room up how you see fit. However, the hotel manager has full control over what channels you watch on TV, what phone calls you receive, and what you are allowed to say to anyone else staying at the hotel. You might luck out and the hotel you prefer happens to be run by someone who either shares many of your views, or simply isn't all that interested in regulating this sort of thing. On the other hand, the hotel you prefer might wind up being owned by someone who does not share your values, and more consequentially, has a profound interest in regulating the discourse of his or her patrons.
Aisha Malik
Even worse of an outcome would be if all the independent hotel owners worked together, to regulate their patrons discourse in an attempt to appease an outside power, who is also interested in maintaining his preferred discourse at each individual hotel room in the network. On the side, they own the contents of your room, and can use your personal belongings in any way they see fit, typically in a way that makes them more money at the expense of your privacy.
It’s quite obvious that in order to preserve personal freedoms, the single owner “independent but government controlled” hotels are not the best way to vacation.
In this context, Bluesky is simply a house you can occupy on the same street as the hotels. You use it just like you would use the Twitter Inn, you have the freedom to set your room up as you please, can watch any channel you want, and can call anyone at any other house, to talk about anything. If you decide you like another house better, you can simply move there and keep your current room arrangement as well as your freedom to watch content you want to watch, and espouse opinions that are less than friendly to the people in power. You own your version of the social network, and can transfer it to other applications that use the same protocol.
The push towards funding the AT protocol is not a push for anyone to purchase a social network; rather it is a push to fund the streets and sidewalks that allow users from Bluesky, Mastodon, and other decentralized networks to view content, make content, interact with people, all while maintaining control and ownership of their personal belongings.
The U.S. Constitution notably lacks a digital bill of rights because it was written by men who would have instantly keeled over if they had seen a toaster. There is no set of irrevocable guidelines for freedom in a digital age, one that properly contextualizes our stated values with an interaction landscape the founders couldn't dream of when writing out our nation's most important documents.
This inability to see the future and predict every challenge that lies ahead is the reason we have constitutional amendments. The truth they held self-evident above all others was the fact that the world will continue to change, and citizens needed mechanisms in place to adapt to a landscape much different than the one they inhabited. They are the tools to apply values from the country's founding to the world the country finds itself in today.
In the same way amendments to the Constitution take work, and a critical mass of people to get on board, so too will a drastic shift in the social media landscape. And just like an amendment to the Constitution, the positive outcome – in this case, striking a blow to social platforms intentionally advancing the international fascist project – can result in the securing of freedoms that we fancy ourselves as valuing above all else.
You can donate to Free Our Feeds here: https://freeourfeeds.com/
Follow Dusty Schmidt on Bluesky at @dustyschmidt.bsky.social
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