The logo of social media platform Bluesky. (Graphic by The Desk)

A consortium of philanthropists, tech moguls and celebrities have launched a new organization that seeks to liberate the foundational technology that powers the social media website Bluesky from that company itself.

The organization, called Free Our Feeds, is backed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Mozilla executives Nabiha Syed and Mark Surman, Hollywood actor and director Alex Winter, actor Mark Ruffalo and journalist Cory Doctorow, among others. The founders say they want to liberate the At Protocol, the platform that Bluesky is built upon, to ensure it remains open and accessible as Bluesky becomes more corporate.

As described, Free Our Feeds envisions the At Protocol in a similar nature to ActivityPub, the open source technology that powers the social platform Mastodon. Over the past two months, Bluesky has experienced staggering growth as users disenfranchised with X (formerly Twitter) under tech...