Four Freedoms of Social Media Protocols (WHY2025)

Our digital communities are controlled by corporate platforms that surveil, manipulate, and arbitrarily deplatform us. We need a Bill of Digital Rights—ensuring privacy, ownership, algorithmic control, and self-governance. This talk lays out the Four Freedoms for Social Media and how open protocols like ATProtocol, ActivityPub, and Nostr make them possible. The future of social media must serve communities, not corporations—and we must demand it. The Four Freedoms of Social Media: A Bill of Rights for Digital Communities Just as free software has the Four Freedoms, our digital communities need Four Freedoms for Social Media—fundamental rights that ensure people, not corporations, control their online spaces. Social media today is defined by surveillance, manipulation, and arbitrary control—but it doesn’t have to be. This talk lays out what we must demand from social protocols: 1. The Freedom to Connect – No one should be prevented from communicating or organizing due to corporate interests or government pressure. 2. The Freedom to Move – Users and communities must be able to leave one platform and take their relationships, content, and identity elsewhere. 3. The Freedom to Understand & Control Algorithms – People should know how their feeds are shaped and have the power to change them. 4. The Freedom to Self-Govern – Communities should set their own rules, rather than being subject to arbitrary moderation and deplatforming. Technologies like AT Protocol (BlueSky), ActivityPub (the Fediverse), and Nostr offer glimpses of this future, but they must be built around these freedoms—not just as features, but as non-negotiable principles. This talk isn’t just about what’s possible—it’s about what we must demand from the next generation of social protocols. The future of digital communities should belong to us—not corporations. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://program.why2025.org/why2025/talk/WDPPRA/