Free Our Feeds - Update #4, October 2025
After a brief slowdown for the endless holidays of northern summer, we at Free Our Feeds have been preparing for the next stage of our initiative: writing, speaking, scheming, and planning. Top of line: we're confident enough that we'll hit our fundraising target to support a new independent public interest technology foundation that started a registration process, and expect to share news by the end of the year, if not much sooner.
Fundraising update
Since our last update we've received several hundred new donations – over 2,200 in all – and nearly $329,000 in total, getting closer to our initial target of $500,000. We're grateful for the continued trust and support of so many of you.
In addition to individual donations, we're talking to advocacy partners, technologists, researchers, and media organizations about their needs and aspirations for open social technologies. And we've been reaching out to foundations, governments and investors to explain both the public interest information case, and the sustainable business case.
Making good on our plans
We overhauled our website to provide more information about our vision and activities. As always a work in progress but drop by to see how we're explaining what we think should go into a decentralized, open social ecosystem: https://freeourfeeds.com/
In August we joined our friends at the ATProto Community Fund and Unternet to support Protocols for Publishers, an event and workshop series to bring together publishers, developers, and researchers to explore open protocols for a sustainable agentic web. Some 60 people working at the crossroads of technology and media braved a stormy night for robust conversations. We focused on how media can retain direct relationships with their communities and audiences, in the face of ongoing displacement by AI agents and search results as the first point of contact for information. We followed that up with a day of planning and thinking for a smaller group of publishers and techies. In a writeup by NeimanLab, Semafor's executive editor Gina Chua captured the zeitgeist as follows: publishers need to decide "if we’re interested in saving the ecosystem or saving ourselves."
In May we awarded a $50,000 grant to the ATProto Community Fund, to support IndieSky, to build community and independent infrastructure on atproto. We are pleased to share that in September they in turn awarded their first grant, providing $5,000 to NorthSky, a Canadian worker-owned cooperative that serves the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. The grant supports "PDS account migration tools for all users of the ATProto ecosystem, and...educational resources and a migration campaign for the NorthSky community as they move to NorthSky's PDS."
Under the Eurosky brand, Free Our Feeds aims to build European social media infrastructure to power social web applications and services. Our initial work on a Commons for Content Moderation or CoCoMo, is well underway. CoCoMo is intended to provide content moderation support for initiatives building on ATProto that don't have the resources to manage often heavy regulatory obligations. The initial phase of the project comprises development technical infrastructure and a legal analysis for moderation on ATProto under European law.
Upcoming events and talks
Ivan Sigal, Sherif Elsayed-Ali and Mark Surman will be speaking in Montreal at McGill University's forum titled Attention: Govern or Be Governed, October 24-25.
Social Web Foundation and the Internet Exchange at Mozfest are hosting a MozFest Fringe gathering in Barcelona to discuss issues related to the fediverse and the open social web, and folks working on the social web should apply to attend. Free Our Feeds Custodian Mallory Knodel says, “We’re hosting a more intimate gathering for folks working on the social web in order to gather actions that can help us strategize and plan for the coming year.”
📅 Friday, November 7
🕓 14:45 – 15:45 CET
📍 Barcelona
🥂 Food and drinks provided
Please RSVP here: https://luma.com/9tyqx0sz
Buy your Mozfest tix here: https://mozillafestival.org
November 19 in Berlin, Free Our Feeds are organizing our first event: Eurosky Live. We will bring together policymakers, media leaders, investors, and founders to explore how open infrastructure can enable European innovation. We feature live demos of startups building on Eurosky, and hear from experts on the policy, business, and technical opportunities ahead. Please register here: https://luma.com/knk1342n?tk=cd1oOg
Writing and speaking
Free our Feeds custodians and collaborators have been speaking and writing at too many events to count recently. Follow us on Bluesky @freeourfeeds.com for links. For today, sharing a recent podcast episode of Power Station that features our custodian Mallory Knodel discussing the open social web.
Organizational support
Exchange Point, a US 501(c)(3) is generously acting as our fiscal sponsor. We are also benefiting from in-kind support from our custodians, and in some cases, their organizations.