Mastodon's CEO announced he is handing control to a non-profit organization, stating that it should not be owned by an individual. It seems that not wanting to become another Zuck or Musk is now a thing.
Free Our Feeds has a $30m plan to take back social media from the broligarchy. It has launched with public support from big names, such as Jimmy Wales, Cory Doctorow, Brian Eno. They hope to build a new social media ecosystem on top of the work of AT Protocol from Bluesky. You can donate to their GoFundMe. Ben Werdmuller shared a few words on it too.
New_ Public explores concepts and examples for a people-powered internet with an excerpt from The Space of the World.
This is in contrast to the recent saga of Meta stripping back on fact-checking and moderation, the ongoing feud between Wordpress and WP Engine, and also the ongoing destruction of X by Elon Musk.
What's more...there's a movement that seems to be gaining traction. I generally refer to it as the indie web. A recent blog post on Figma talks about making space for the handmade web, James takes and indie approach with tools for the next decade and Ben Werd says the indie web should be a universe of discovery.
Hope is not lost...Whilst it can feel like there is no light at the end of the tunnel, it's important to remember there are different ways forward. Much of the progress we are seeing is not necessarily new. Efforts for the indie and a more ethical web have been going on behind the scenes for years. The good news is that it feels like more change and traction is starting to bear fruit. Bluesky is one such example that has been gaining traction. (Follow me there!)
Another such example of ethical platforms, Ghost was set up in 2013 as a non-profit. It's main competitor, Substack is heading towards being the Facebook of newslsetters—lack of moderation ethics and a drive for growth over everything else. And we mustn't forget that Wikipedia is a non-profit too, whilst not in the same software space as the big platforms, it shows that organisations can exist differently.
I haven't even touched upon the drama of TikTok bans. And then there is the new Tumblr Communities, owned by Wordpress. Do we really want to use something associated with the drama of Wordpress?
We can take action...through all of this mess is the reality that we can potentially make an impact with our every day behaviour. Subreddits have started banning X links, we've made the decision at Minstry of Testing to do the same for links going forward and we'll try to remove any historical links in the coming months.
We can do this on a personal level too. I've gone back to personal blogging and choosing to use it for my personal photos and videos going forward. I don't need social media, I'm tired of all the games these companies are playing and the never ending digital displacement. 2025 is the year that I started extracting myself from the majority of these spaces.
We can make individual choices to support companies with better ethics to hopefully help us avoid systems that don't truly serve us. Our attention and our links is what these platforms are desperate for, let's not give it to them.
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