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Free Our Feeds

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31 pointscdme18 comments

Nostr is much better protocol for this despite the bitcoin slant. That being said, i only follow non-bitcoin cultists (except some nostr devs that are also bitcoiners) and the sheer variety and different use cases of the apps being made,that are actually up and running and working, is crazy. And every time someone comes up with a new app idea/client, i just go there and immediately use it with my same identity with one click. Also Nostr is not vc backed and many unrelated devs work based on their own ambitions mostly from donations and funding from https://opensats.org/. Free Our Feeds, with much less money, could create a set of standard redundant general public relays that are not commonly added by all the bitcoiners to grow a userbase with unslanted eclectic content. For onboarding they shoudl create as service that combines creating a new account with assigning a domain-based handle and acting as an "nsecbunker" / event signer. This service has normal password and stuff that can be reset and stores the unchangeable public/private keys (also acts as a signer for events). To the user, the onboarding is just like email services: Pick a nostr name account host: you make an account with a name and password, then on each app you type in your handle and it directs to the nsecbunker software running on that provider that asks for your current password. If that service shuts down it's as easy as finng another oine and putting in your private key and your same identity keeps moving on, albeit your "handle" would be different. For smarter/technical users, they can just use an nsecbunker url or a signer extension. Honestly, a signer extensions (or app like amber) are like the best user experience but getting people to set up the app with a private key isn't a good experience yet.

It makes no sense for "Free our feeds" to work with Bluesky.

Bluesky has accepted investor money at a $700m valuation. This means they promised investors access to users' data and shoving tons of add into their feeds.

Neither is in "the people's interest" which is what "Free our feeds" wants.

For the same reason Bluesky won't decentralize their network: It would tank their valuation.

For now, we only have Mastodon.

We need more instances so people have lots of choices if they don't like their current instance's politics.

Personally, i feel there should be less censorship between nodes.

I'd take this more seriously if the call to action was to support Mastodon. I understand Mastodon has its problems. I also understand that at-proto might, in some hypothetical future, not be reliant on a single entity to run and manage. But, warts and all, Mastodon is already free from the kind of centralized control that is decried in the linked article, while Bluesky is not.

Bluesky/ATproto have serious issues but Mastodon is a joke, for many reasons.

Like?

Its a joke that is successfully run and federated by multiple parties at scale, which is what the signers of this initiative claim to want. Bluesky/ATproto is for all practical purposes run and controlled by a single entity.

ActivityPub is a page 1 design flaw with no independent identity. It's just a bunch of separate social networks that let an admin connect to other sites is a really subpar way. You have to juggle a bunch of accounts to see and do what you want on activitypub. Nostr is just a much better protocol for this kind of thing (and in general), but bitcoin bro boners scare people away rightfully so. Nostr as a protocol needs an alternative "scene" with a different set of standard relays that this org could provide. If they had an app they would be pre-set-up with those and they would be separate from the relays the current bitcoin peeps use. sure the bitcoin folks could add those relays too, but 1) they like using their own stuff so they likely would want to keep growing their homegrown relay community, and 2) it would hopefully not matter since the celebrity backed marketing effort that isn't focusing on censorship resistance would have more draw even if a chunk of them posted to those relays. Many nostr devs are onboard for good user driven moderation tools in clients, and any relay admin can moderate whatever as it is. Honestly I'd be fine with a basically a copy of nostr that wasn't nostr. But IMHO, without 1) independent user owned identity that works across everything & 2)community infrastructure than can easily be held up by the non-rich community if need be, then it's not a solution for the future.

As I said, Mastodon/ActivityPub has its issues. If the goal of "Free Our Feeds" was "let's build activity pub into a better mousetrap" or "let's design a protocol that fixes Activity Pub's flaws", I'd be all for it. As it stands, Free Our Feeds is engaged in a pointless exercise: they want to "free" Bluesky/AT-proto from control of Bluesky and build a "fire exit" for Bluesky users if Bluesky "turns evil". They are building something that can only work if Bluesky lets it work. They cannot force Bluesky to interoperate or allow data/social graph migration. They are building something in case Bluesky "turns evil" that will only work if Bluesky doesn't "turn evil." It makes no sense.

https://marcusb.org/posts/2025/01/your-feeds-are-already-fre...

I’m all for another team trying to build out another relay and prove atproto has the decentralized “juice”.

Might be more convinced to donate if there was a white paper with more details on the roadmap the funds will help drive.

Philosophy is pretty well explained here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2025/01/13/bluesky...

From the guys at Mozilla Foundation, who made a $25 million margin in 2023 (!), have $118 millions in assets, invested $35 millions in AI bullshit, but still fired 30% of the Foundation workers in 2024. And now they want more money to decentralize a private company, while Mastodon, a non-profit initiative only has $0.5 millions in funding a year. Is this a joke?

Mozilla could easily give $5 millions a year to various Fediverse projects, greatly improving things, on a project that is already decentralized today.

https://www.usermag.co/p/freeourfeeds-a-30m-plan-to-take-bac...

I didn't know that Jack Dorsey wasn't a billionaire...

How is this related to TFA, or even Bluesky today?

Jack Dorsey was a billionaire while running Twitter and censoring our feeds. This new donation-hungry initiative starts their appeal with: "Save Social Media From Billionaire Capture." They should be honest and say: "Save our social media from conservatives doing what the liberals were doing." Jack Dorsey is still a billionaire and still behind (some of) our feeds as even if people use customer domains, 99.99% of them will still rely on his service.

All this does is give more options. It’s "free our feeds," not mess with your feeds. If you like Xchan, you can stay there, or join the flat earthers on Dorsey's Nostr. Nostr does actually have cool tech. Nobody is taking anything away from you.

Honesty is key! People are okay if Liberals censors them (or censor others) but are not okay if a Conservative does it! I will respect people saying openly: "Conservatives now control a lot of the Social Media, let's build Liberals-controlled alternatives!" This is how Conservatives did it openly: Truth Social, Parler, Gab, etc. I respect honesty, I respect options but detest lies and hypocrisy!

They’re not calling to hop onto bsky, they’re saying they want an open atproto compatible platform

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