A New Era of Digital Sovereignty

Imagine a world where your digital identity is truly your own, where every post, connection, and interaction exists as an extension of your personal autonomy. This isn’t a utopian vision; it’s the necessary evolution of social media in an era where digital sovereignty is a fundamental right.

For decades, we have unknowingly traded our digital independence for the convenience of centralized platforms. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—these platforms have shaped our digital lives, but they often function like gilded cages. Every post we create, every relationship we cultivate, every conversation we engage in is ultimately controlled by corporations that can modify, monetize, or erase our digital existence with a single policy change or algorithmic decision.

A New Future for TikTok

As TikTok decides on its ownership future, Project Liberty has teamed up with Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, and Kevin O’Leary, renowned investor and entrepreneur known for his role on Shark Tank, to take the platform on-chain. This is about more than just TikTok; it’s about who controls the digital spaces where billions connect, create, and consume information. For too long, the internet’s most vibrant communities have been governed by a handful of corporations. Project Liberty aims to change that, ensuring that social networks serve the people who power them, not just those who own them.

The key to this shift is Frequency, a public, permissionless blockchain developed by Project Liberty’s technology team, designed specifically for high-volume social networking. It prioritizes interoperability, data sovereignty, and resilience against centralized control. Together, these initiatives aim to move social media away from corporate ownership and toward an open, user-controlled model.

As the debate over TikTok’s ownership and data practices continues, we must ask: should a single entity control the social fabric of a generation? If TikTok is to be reimagined within a decentralized framework, it will need true interoperability, user-owned data, and open governance. This is where Frequency comes in.

From TikTok to Bluesky: Building a Decentralized Future

The question of TikTok’s future highlights a much larger shift in how we view social media. The need for decentralization is now urgent. Bluesky, an open-source social media project, attempts to address this call.

Bluesky isn’t just another platform; it aims to redefine the relationship between users and their digital identities. However, true digital liberation demands structural commitment to decentralization. While Bluesky offers a glimpse into a decentralized social web, key vulnerabilities remain. Many storage nodes remain centralized, and the relay and Firehose systems are concentrated in a few hands, limiting true decentralization.

Frequency: The Backbone of a Decentralized Social Web

Frequency represents an entirely new framework for digital identity and social media governance. It ensures that users—rather than platforms—hold the keys to their digital lives.

Decentralization is more than a technical shift; it’s about restoring fundamental rights. Users must be able to grant and revoke access to their data. Their online relationships should belong to them, not a platform that can manipulate or erase them.

Frequency operates on minimal, purposeful decentralization, ensuring long-term sustainability. It stores only essential data on-chain to guarantee individual data rights, focusing on core social events while allowing for tokenized incentives to manage network capacity.

Frequency also addresses the roadblocks that hinder previous decentralization efforts. It ensures that no single entity can alter or censor user data and provides a decentralized backup of Bluesky’s Firehose, ensuring user-generated content remains accessible.

Achieving Digital Self-Sovereignty

The internet was meant to be open and free, but today we face a crossroads: continue relying on corporate-controlled social media or create a more open, user-owned digital future. While Bluesky is a step forward, without addressing its centralization points, it risks becoming just another walled garden. TikTok presents an even larger challenge; the real question isn’t who should own TikTok, but whether any social media giant should be owned at all.

Decentralization offers a new way forward, where platforms are built around user sovereignty instead of corporate control. With Frequency, we are closer to reclaiming the promise of the internet. True digital liberation requires breaking free from the data monopolies that have defined the social media era. This isn’t just a technological upgrade; it’s a shift in power.