Our Promises
Privacy
We respect your privacy
We abide by the principles privacy by design, and privacy first to the highest regulatory standards Privacy by design (PbD) is an approach to designing systems and processes that takes into account the need to protect privacy throughout the entire development lifecycle. PbD requires privacy to be considered at the earliest stages of the design process and throughout the operation of the system or process. It involves implementing a set of privacy principles, such as data minimization, user control, and transparency, to ensure that privacy is a fundamental component of any system or process. The goal of PbD is to ensure that privacy is built into systems at the outset, rather than being an afterthought or bolted on later. Privacy first refers to the principle of designing products, services, and systems that prioritize user privacy and data protection. It means putting the privacy of users first and foremost, rather than treating it as an afterthought or necessary evil. This can include measures such as minimizing data collection, giving users control over their data, and using encryption and other security measures to keep information safe.
GDPR
Your data is safe
We are GDPR compliant and will never provide your data to third parties. You always have full access to all your data, and the right be forgotten – meaning you can fully delete your account at any time, so even if we wished to we cannot identify you as a past user of our platform. To achieve this, no other data is collected and stored than is strictly necessary for the operation of the software ecosystem. Finally, we develop to the highest security standards to reduce the risk of hacks, breaches, and data leaks.
Mental Health
Your mental health and personal fulfillment are our priorities
Social media companies are plagued by a plethora of issues including:
- the proliferation of bot networks, scammers, and fake news
- online harassment and abuse
- information bubbles & polarization
- dark design patterns that lead to device addition and screen-time abuse
- AI bias and opaque, kafkaesque algorithms
- The chilling effect of surveillance capitalism on free thought and speech
Taken in isolation, an individual might be able to successfully navigate the maligned influences of any of these problems, but no person is an island, and together these issues can create a collective social trauma that threatens the well-being of society as a whole. Our mission is to increase the level of trust in society by improving the integrity of communities, to address these issues and mitigate their impact on our communities. We can do this because the root cause of all of these issues is in the ad funded behavioral model selectively cultivated and nurtured by the venture capital industry. By ditching the shared priors and biases of mainstream startup and tech culture we have created a genuine alternative, built on deeper and more sustainable ideological, technical, and commercial foundations. To take just one example of many, our peer verification model provides insight into the origin of content, amplifying the voices of real people and making it more difficult to spread fake news or AI-generated content, without relying on the invasive model of ID verification typically adopted by social media giants.
Screen Addiction
Usage of our products will be habitual, but not addictive
Social media technology should be a tool, not a trap, with less behavioural addiction, and more fulfilment. Most social media companies consider users as the product, and advertisers as the customer. They believe that communities serve the function of increasing engagement in the service of advertisers. To service their customers they’ll do almost anything for your attention, using advanced machine learning algorithms to tap your dopamine circuits with emotionally charged content and continuous social feedback, to make you addicted. Your purpose, and your actual goals, are irrelevant. We believe this is wrong. As a core principle we don’t use fancy machine learning algorithms to optimise for attention, polarization and addiction. Instead, we use simple and intuitive mathematics that allows people – as in you, not us – to choose what is important, what is amplified. Tech companies can be beneficial without causing addiction. Google’s core product, for example, doesn’t require prolonged usage to make money and has been more profitable than social media. Imagine if social were more like Google search, which you open, search, get information, and go socialize.
The Environment
We take our responsibility for the environment seriously
The extensive carbon footprint of social media has largely been ignored in discussions about the negative impact of social media. A critical examination of the energy consumption, data storage, and server cooling requirements of social media platforms highlights the significant role played by social media in contributing to climate change. Recent reports indicate that social media platforms, particularly Facebook, account for over 500,000 metric tons of carbon emissions annually, which is equivalent to the carbon emissions of 125,000 cars on the road. The energy consumption required to operate social media platforms is steadily rising, significantly contributing to greenhouse gas emissions as well. The current social media model thrives on creating an “always-on” mentality that encourages behavioral addiction among users. The carbon footprint of social media involves infrastructure, operation, transmission, and maintenance of a colossal number of servers that require a massive amount of energy to run. We must shift away from this paradigm and consider ways of promoting digital environments that bring people together, and encourage physical interactions that create a more measured and purposeful user experience. In doing so, we can foster sustainable use of digital technologies in daily life. At Public Spaces our model is designed to minimize energy consumption, reduce carbon emissions, reduce screen time, and prioritize social interactions in physical spaces, while still promoting the benefits of social media in facilitating communication and socialization.
Governance
Rules by communities, for the community.
Governance in technology development involves integrating safeguards and standards that reflect ethical values, that balances design principles, growth, sustainability, user privacy, and a conscious approach to negative externalities.
We’ve seen how difficult it is for laws and regulations to keep pace with innovation. That’s why we have set ‘ground-rules’ for digital platforms, which are woven through every aspect of the project.
As stewards, we consider ourselves gardeners more than farmers, cultivating an ecosystem of multi-disciplinary contributors, advisors, and ambassadors who form the core governance team. Our collective ethos allows technologists and designers to work with user evangelists, customers, partners, community leaders, social scientists, and product ethicists, to guide our product development. Together, as interdisciplinary stakeholders and partners, we are creating a framework for online activity and growth that focuses on technology for the common good, on social epistemology and shared truth, and reflects the everyday civil society that we experience, and take for granted, offline.
You may consider this abstract and academic, but it is reflected at the lowest levels of our product architecture.