Dear MickGhee, Thank you for your passionate engagement! We really value people who have a strong voice and want to see things done fairly and for the benefit of all.
For the last 5 years we've been writing code, working out architecture, and economic model, as well as identity and security models, along with UI and UX models. It took the concerted effort of some very smart and dedicated people. We are committed to being completely transparent. We will show you all of the work we have done to date. We will do our best to answer questions posed with goodwill to the questioner's satisfaction. This work has cost the people involved not just 5 years of engagement, but 3.2M USD, out of pocket. The raise for this crowdsale is capped at 1.2M USD. We're not even close to recouping what we've put in, let alone heading off to the Bahamas.
Instead, part of this effort is to see if the community has the will to engage, to begin to address the issues facing us. All of us. (See, we're passionate, too!) Here's the situation as we see it:
Over the past decade, social media platforms have risen to become a major force on the Internet. As two-thirds of all Internet users are using these platforms, with 1 out of every 5 pageviews occurring on Facebook alone, and with many directly equating “social media” with “Internet”, the importance of these venues cannot be understated.
The amount of money social networks generate is staggering. Leading the pack is Facebook, earning 3.85 billion dollars in the last quarter of 2014, followed by Twitter with $479m. When thinking about these numbers, it’s important to remember that the value created on these networks - what allows Facebook et al to generate these profits - comes directly and unequivocally from their users. In fact, users and their worth is the primary parameter these connetworks are measured by. Facebook recently acquired WhatsApp for $19b, paying 42$ per user. Similarly, the value of Facebook and Twitter users is often calculated through their market cap - currently at 141$ and and 81.5$, respectively.
Faced with these numbers, many people are asking themselves, “Does it make sense that the value we create simply by sharing our lives online is retained by the people who happened to be the first to provide the infrastructure allowing us to do so? That these social platforms’ stated aim is to increase the revenue they can extricate from us? From our basic need to communicate and share ourselves with others?”
Indeed, this is how current social networking service providers see their users: as unpaid laborers. As free content creators whose behaviors can be recorded and measured, the data generated auctioned off to other corporations. And for many, this may still be fine. These services are now seen as basic necessities in our digital age, and so perhaps the balance struck between user and service provider is a fair one. However, there are other issues tipping the scale against the incumbents: there’s been a breach of trust. The information going into user feeds is being manipulated, and the information going out - including details of user activity outside of Facebook - is being handed over to governmental authorities; privacy settings be damned.
The entire foundation of our established online identity is based in these axioms, of us being surveilled, labeled and “sold” to the highest bidder. And with our social network profiles serving more and more as the default identities on the web, everywhere - most services do not bother creating their own identity and authentication components - perhaps it’s time to stop and think if this how we want our digital identity to exist and evolve.
The more we wait, the more irreversible this becomes.
But, it's worse. Why? Because this global panopticon is being built alongside and to support a growing economic imbalance. Here's an excellent description of just how bad the economic imbalance is in the US:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM. These two trends taken together are a recipe for disaster. From the riots in Greece to Ferguson, the unrest is no accident. It's only going to get worse. Unless we do something. We. Us. There's no one else to do it for us.
Now, we've taken up the challenge to do something about it. Synereo is a first step towards a different way of engaging each other. Synereo is a first step towards reorganizing social media technologies and capital for the purpose of taking care of each other and the planet. If after giving our work a thorough review, you still feel we are conniving assholes out to steal peoples money, then we deserve your condemnation. But, first, come look at what we've done, and see for yourself. i will personally answer any and all questions you have about the code, the architecture, the security model, the identity model, our social contract model, the maths underlying it. i know the rest of the team is wiling to engage with the same level of diligence.
We really want people to give it a thorough review. If there's a hole in it, we want to know. If there's a better way to do something, we want to know. We are in this together. If we don't take up the challenge now, the next time we look up we will not see the same sky. Like i said, we're passionate! That's why we really appreciate your passion and are glad you're sharing it. We're going to have to be passionate about this to succeed.
Peace be with you,
--greg
CSO, Synereo.