Origin Story
The Promise
The internet was built on a promise: that anyone with a creative spark could share their voice with the world, directly and without permission. For a brief moment, it felt like the golden age of creativity. Musicians found fans, writers found readers, and artists found patrons, all without the gatekeepers of old.
The Break
But that promise has been broken. The platforms that once connected us have become engines of extraction. Algorithms now dictate what gets seen, prioritizing engagement bait over human expression. Value chains have become opaque, directing the vast majority of revenue to intermediaries while the creators who generate the value fight for scraps.
The rise of generative AI has accelerated this crisis. Systems are being trained on our life's work without consent or compensation, aiming not to assist creativity but to replace it with cost-effective simulacra. The goal is a frictionless, lifeless internet populated by "content" rather than art.
The Response
Save The Creators provides a framework for collective action that preserves individual independence. We serve as a bridge between creative disciplines, coordinating with advocacy organizations to build a unified front against extraction. As a project of Distributed Creatives, the parent nonprofit, SaveTheCreators carries the public advocacy work while Distributed Creatives handles the organizational and technical foundation behind it.
The movement grows through signatures on the Declaration for Creators, free membership, and relationships with advocacy organizations.
We're working to ensure the next era of the web is built to support creatives, where technology serves the creator, not the other way around.
Formal Statements
North Star
Unite creators across all disciplines to claim their rights to consent, fair pay, and lasting preservation.
Mission Statement
Keep creators at the table by connecting research insights, advocacy partners, and industry leaders so creators can push for fair treatment, safer workplaces, and more equitable platforms.
Vision Statement
We envision a world where creators thrive through fair compensation, ownership of their work, and meaningful connections with their audiences -- a creative ecosystem built on transparency, choice, and respect where technology empowers rather than exploits.
What We Believe
Creators inherently own value but have signed it away because intermediaries controlled distribution. That game is over.
Collective strength through tech + large membership can shift laws and industry norms.
Art-based movement serves as non-threatening cultural infiltration for systemic change.
The movement is bigger than any one organization. SaveTheCreators is the hub, not the whole.
Brand Architecture
SaveTheCreators is the public advocacy surface. When we point to Distributed Creatives, we are pointing to the parent nonprofit that owns the broader organizational and technical layer.
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The parent nonprofit infrastructure. Distributed Creatives handles the organizational, legal, and technical foundation behind the advocacy work.
SaveTheCreators is a project of Distributed Creatives, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Visit Distributed Creatives02
The public advocacy hub. This is where the declaration, public education, movement-building, and creator-rights evidence become visible and actionable.
SaveTheCreators.org is the public-facing advocacy brand and the connective tissue linking creator-rights work across disciplines.
Coalition Credibility
Save The Creators is designed as connective tissue between creators, advocacy organizations, and aligned public-interest partners. This section keeps to verified public relationships and coalition lanes.
Distributed Creatives
Confirmed public anchor. Save The Creators is a project of Distributed Creatives, the nonprofit infrastructure currently standing behind this work.
Creator-rights advocacy organizations
Organizations defending creator consent, fair pay, and ownership in adjacent campaigns.
Cross-disciplinary creator associations
Associations spanning music, writing, visual art, film, games, and other creative practices.
Labor and workplace campaigns
Designed to hold public coalition partners focused on contracts, working conditions, and collective bargaining across creative sectors.
Research and policy allies
Open for public-interest research groups and policy advocates whose work helps creators challenge extractive systems.
Preservation and creator-tech allies
Archives, tools, and infrastructure allies where technology serves the creator, not the other way around.
No invented affiliations. No synthetic logos. These category markers identify the kinds of aligned organizations this movement coordinates with.
Credibility
Nonprofit status
SaveTheCreators is presented as a project of Distributed Creatives, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Formation
Founder materials describe Distributed Creatives as founded in 2024 by artists, technologists, and advocates.
Published governing-law jurisdiction
Current site legal decisions confirm Colorado as the governing-law jurisdiction for the published legal framework.
Milestones
Source materials describe the parent organization as founded in 2024 by a diverse group of artists, technologists, and advocates.
The source set confirms a Version 1.0 declaration in founder materials.
Board materials confirm a two-phase strategy centered on the advocacy site, relationship-building, and tool work.
Founder & Team
The site's central arc comes from Matty Bovard's founding narrative: the promise of connection, the era of extraction, and the need for collective action. Related source material also describes the Declaration as drafted by the founding members of Distributed Creatives in collaboration with creators across disciplines.
That parent-organization relationship is public, not hidden: Distributed Creatives is the nonprofit home, while SaveTheCreators is the advocacy-facing movement site.
Add your voice to the call for creators worldwide to claim what's rightfully theirs.
