Introduction

The “Free Our Feeds” initiative is a movement to establish an independent foundation for decentralised social networking. This essentially means the leaders of the movement want to break social media control away from heavy influencers such as big corporations and billionaires, and put control back into the hands of the members.

Specifically, the “Free our Feeds” initiative focuses on Bluesky’s [Open Source] Authenticated Transfer (AT) protocol. This protocol is used by Bluesky to transfer, store, and process data associated with the feeds and profiles on the site. By establishing an independent foundation, the movement leaders want to ensure there are alternative options which are not influenced by capitalism and are independent of corporations.

Why the Movement Matters

Social media, and the internet as a whole, has been gravitating more towards putting more power in the hands of companies and taking away power from the users. Take for example the software we use. More than ever, software (and web applications) requires that we are connected to the internet and have an account associated with the company providing us said software or service (even entire operating systems like Windows and MacOS have been heading this direction). Additionally, companies bind you to an End-User Licence Agreement (EULA) basically ensuring you have little to no ownership over the software you buy or the data you use / generate. The company owns and controls everything.

Additionally, ethical concerns about online censorship are growing. As billionaires, corporations, advertisers, and stock holders gain more power over the internet, they are also gaining more control over the content we are allowed to see or post (and their time, place, and manner). All of the largest social media platforms I can think of (e.g. Facebook, X, Bluesky, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Threads, Reddit, Instagram, Nextdoor, Discord) have a significant number of users expressing concerns over how they censor (or don’t censor) their platform. While there is disagreement as to how much censorship, the common argument is that users do not have much (if any) voice in the matter. And when a user is censored or moderated, there is little to nothing they can do about it even if they were wrongly censored.

How the Movement Helps End-users

Having alternatives which are not backed by large corporations or billionaires can be (but are not always) very beneficial for giving back control to the users. When corporations or billionaires call the shots, the focus is not on the user experience. The focus is on the “product” (and the “product” is, collectively, you, me, and the social media platform, to be “sold” to companies looking to use our data, to provide targeted advertisements, or to buy stock in the company). This means that the owners of the platform will do what is in the best interest of their wallets / stock holders, not the users.

However, decentralised platforms and frameworks such as the AT protocol, Mastodon (a network of micro-blogging servers), and Minds (a network which utilises the block chain and rewards creators in Ethereum for content) can help remedy this. No one corporation or entity owns any of these platforms, which means they are independent of each other. Regardless of what any one community or company decides on an AT server, Mastodon server, or Minds server, it does not affect the other servers or communities (and sometimes, users can migrate or share their data between servers). And these servers might also run their own copy of the platform / software (AT, Mastodon, Minds) as well, meaning should development of the core framework halt, the communities can still remain online (and a new group of developers can take over or fork the core project). Furthermore, the individual communities call their own shots and run their own rules.

This provides the following benefits to the end-users:

• Users have a lot more control and freedom over their data.
• The platforms are more resilient; should something happen to Facebook / X / etc then everything on those sites could be gone and shut down forever. But these platforms are frameworks on which to build communities. And users can always change communities and sometimes migrate or download their data.
• The software running the platforms are more resilient; since they are Open Source, virtually anyone can help contribute to it. Should the core developers drop out or do something controversial, others can step in and fork the project to keep it alive. That’s not the case for proprietary sites like any of the big ones I mentioned (Bluesky being an exception as its underlying infrastructure is Open Source).
• The staff of the communities on these platforms have more freedom over how to govern their communities.

How Composr CMS is Relevant

Composr CMS is a Free and Open Source Software (this is a new tutorial I wrote on FOSS). FOSS can be freely downloaded and installed by anyone on their own servers. In the case of CMS, this allows anyone to host their own websites. Since each webmaster has their own copy of the software, they have full control over their instance / site including all of its data. This means even if the core developers of Composr CMS or whatever software downloaded stop maintaining the software, websites running the software will still work. This is unlike proprietary platforms such as Facebook, X, TikTok, and so on. And FOSS code is often made available on source control repositories (e.g. GitHub, GitLab) which means other users can jump in as developers or fork the project into something else.

While proprietary platforms make it much easier to create sites, communities, or profiles than FOSS, they offer little in terms of control. FOSS aims to give back control to the webmasters and users instead of being locked down by the founders. They are a great alternative for building decentralised websites where you can fully manage the data and the code. The Open Source nature of the software also allows users to collaborate together on its development and direction instead of having a few select people in power calling all the shots. And it enables transparency; users can see the code to know exactly what the software is doing and what changes were made.

Does Composr CMS Have a Foundation?

One of the main goals of the Free Our Feeds initiative is to establish an independent foundation for the AT Protocol. Foundations are organisations (sometimes non-profit) which fund the project(s) and sometimes provide core management for them. In the Free and Open Source community, Foundations usually receive income by providing professional support / services for those running the software and then tunnel the funds back into development of the software.

Originally, Chris Graham and I considered establishing a Composr Foundation in much the same way as ocProducts, Ltd. financially supported Composr CMS up to version 10 (except the Composr Foundation would be specific to Composr, not Chris Graham, and led by a Board of Directors elected from the Composr community).

We abandoned this idea because the process of establishing and running a foundation involved a lot of legal politics which were contrary to our new (Bazaar model) vision for version 11. Instead, we decided that Composr CMS would not have any one foundation or supporter, and instead would be fully supported by the community. There will still be a Board of Directors, but all members can contribute development and ideas towards the software (or vote on development of features and ideas, and even the adding or removal of members on the Board). And should anyone need professional support, members can offer each other their own professional support through their own entities.

What About Cloud / Decentralised Capabilities?

The AT Protocol, Mastodon, and Minds have facilities where data are spread across multiple servers. And generally, it is possible to host profiles and data between servers rather easily as the servers can be inter-connected.

However, Composr CMS does not officially support this as it is a standalone software and not an infrastructure / protocol. Data stored on one site / server cannot be shared / accessed on another [easily]. But it can be downloaded through version 11’s privacy module.

Chris Graham, to my understanding, was working on a GitLab branch, v11_cloud, which would introduce the ability to shard Composr data across multiple servers through shared filesystems and other means (therefore making it more appropriate to run sites in a Cloud environment), however the branch has not been completed. And due to our very limited developer power right now, I do not have any plans to incorporate this into version 11. But it’s worth checking out if you perhaps want to see what he was planning to do or maybe if you want to pick up where he left off. Note the branch is several years old and has significantly diverged from the current v11 branch.

Conclusion

Free Our Feeds is just one of several ways people are coming together to stick it to Big Tech and put the power and control back into the hands of the end-user. There are many options out there for webmasters to consider if they want a decentralised social platform for their community which will not be controlled by corporations or billionaires.

Composr CMS falls within the realm of Free and Open Source Software (just like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc) which are a group of readily-available software you can download, install, and run yourself to host your own sites. And even if the main developers or even the main sites of these software go down, your site will still keep working (although it probably won’t get updates until other developers step in, and some telemetry services will stop working). And you can modify the software to your liking to suit your needs.

Composr CMS version 11 is / will be putting more emphasis on community support and encouraging users to be a part of the ecosystem. And I’m hoping version 12 will also put more focus on developing decentralised websites (but that really all depends on our developer workforce and what the users want).

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in a comment on this news article. Note that some of what I wrote regarding the Composr Foundation idea and the Cloud branch are over-simplifications.