Conversation

I've gotten a couple of questions asking why the Fourth Estate would want to build out a social network like Civiq.social. It's surely insanity and madness, isn't it?

The answer is: It's about the Public Trust.

Let me explain... briefly.

- The traditional keepers of the public trust - the local news organizations and newspapers - are dying. In many ways it is their own fault for ceding the role of publisher and distributor to big-tech and social networks like: Twitter and Facebook, Google, Apple and others. Living and dying by these platforms that they neither own or control, yet depend on for their very existence.

- Big tech and big social has proven that they are the poorest of stewards of the public's trust. The are quagmires of disinformation, misinformation, and mal-information. They treating the user as the product, mining personal data and value and sacrificing privacy.

- Increasingly people no longer have access to trustworthy news and information that they need to make wise decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments.

Civiq aims to address some of these problems.

We aim to build a social platform that puts the user first. No ad tracking, no ad targeting, no data mining– that means user info stays private.

We aim to endow Civiq with features that empower news organizations, particularly for local news orgs, and strengthens their connections to the communities they serve. Allowing them to run their own instances of Civiq, with all the benefits and responsibilities that come with it, while still being federated and connected.

Lastly, we will strive to make Civiq a platform where real people from around the world are free to responsibly express themselves. While actively fighting misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information.

So yes - madness and insanity, but needed more now than ever before - I hope you'll join me.