At the core of Bluesky’s philosophy is the idea that instead of being centralized in the hands of one person or institution, social media governance should obey the principle of subsidiarity. The Nobel Prize–winning economist Elinor Ostrom found, through studying grassroots solutions to local environmental problems around the world, that some problems are best solved locally, while others are best solved at a higher level.
In terms of content moderation, posts related to child sexual abuse or terrorism are best handled by professionals trained to help keep millions or billions safe. But a lot of decisions about speech can be solved in each community, or even user by user as people assemble Bluesky block lists.
So all the right elements are currently in place at Bluesky to usher in this new architecture for social media: independent ownership, newfound popularity, a stark contrast with other dominant platforms, and right-minded leadership. But challenges remain, and we can’t count on Bluesky to do this right without support.
Critics have pointed out that Bluesky has yet to turn a profit and is currently running on venture capital, the same corporate structure that brought us Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies. As of now, there’s no option to exit Bluesky and take your data and network with you, because there are no other servers that run the AT Protocol. Bluesky CEO Jay Graber deserves credit for her stewardship so far, and for attempting to avoid the dangers of advertising incentives. But the process by which capitalism degrades tech products is so predictable that Cory Doctorow coined a now-popular term for it: enshittification.
That’s why we need to act now to secure the foundation of this digital future and make it enshittification-proof. This week, prominent technologists started a new project, which we at New_ Public are supporting, called Free Our Feeds. There are three parts: First, Free Our Feeds wants to create a nonprofit foundation to govern and protect the AT Protocol, outside of Bluesky the company. We also need to build redundant servers so all users can leave with their data or build anything they want—regardless of policies set by Bluesky. Finally, we need to spur the development of a whole ecosystem built on this tech with seed money and expertise.
It’s worth noting that this is not a hostile takeover: Bluesky and Graber recognize the importance of this effort and have signaled their approval. But the point is, it can’t rely on them. To free us from fickle billionaires, some of the power has to reside outside Bluesky, Inc.
If we get this right, so much is possible. Not too long ago, the internet was full of builders and people working together: the open web. Email. Podcasts. Wikipedia is one of the best examples—a collaborative project to create one of the web’s best free, public resources. And the reason we still have it today is the infrastructure built up around it: The nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation protects the project and insulates it from the pressures of capitalism. When’s the last time we collectively built anything as good?
We can shift the balance of power and reclaim our social lives from these companies and their billionaires. This is an opportunity to bring much more independence, innovation, and local control to our online conversations. We can finally build the “Wikipedia of social media,” or whatever we want. But we need to act, because the future of the internet can’t depend on whether one of the richest men on Earth wakes up on the wrong side of the bed.
Eli Pariser is author of The Filter Bubble and Co-Director of New_ Public, a nonprofit R&D lab that’s working to reimagine social media.
Deepti Doshi is a Co-Director of New_ Public and was a director at Meta.
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