Civic entrepreneur and philanthropist Frank H. McCourt, Jr., has announced a $100 million investment to create Project Liberty, an initiative designed to build a more equitable technology infrastructure for the Internet.

The funding includes $75 million to establish the McCourt Institute, which will work to advance the development of technology solutions that serve the common good. With Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and Sciences Po in Paris as its initial academic partners, the institute will work to develop interdisciplinary teams from around the world and conduct applied research on creating and applying technologies that improve society and revolutionize social media. The institute will announce its leadership team and an initial slate of grants and projects in the fall.

The remaining $25 million will be allocated toward the development and adoption of the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), an open-source protocol owned by the public that leverages public blockchain technology to put people in control of their own data. According to Project Liberty, DSNP will be governed by the community that uses it and has the potential to shift the power balance of the web economy from social media companies to individuals, and the protocol's open architecture will create opportunities for entrepreneurs, application developers, and social innovators.

"Like so many others, I've watched with deepening distress as the technology meant to provide universal access to opportunity and bring us together has become a primary reason for extreme polarization, division, and inequity," said McCourt. "Today's social media platforms increasingly control our data, fuel division, erode our privacy, and threaten our democracies. These problems can't be regulated away. It's time to reinvent a new way forward. I'm committed to leveraging my expertise, networks, and resources to create a better public infrastructure for the Internet — one that results in healthier societies and economies."

"The centralization of economic activity, political dialogue, and social life onto a handful of global tech platforms has created a large and interlocking set of vulnerabilities and threats," said DSNP advisor Andrew McLaughlin, who previously served as head of global public policy at Google and deputy chief technology officer in the Obama administration. "We need to build better stuff — new technology infrastructures that support open, decentralized innovation. DSNP is a bold, promising, and concrete shared social infrastructure that applies known technologies, uses proven models of open-source development, and embodies clear and vital values. It has all the right ingredients to be a profound game-changer."

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