INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Decentralization is the buzzword du jour
Everything – from our currencies to our databases – are supposed to exist, immutably, in this strange new world
And Bill Ottman wants to add our social media to the mix.Ottman, an intense young man with a passion to fix the world, is the founder of
Minds.com, a New York-based startup that has been receiving waves of new users as zealots and the the not-so-zealous have been leaving other
In fact, Zuckerberg’s bad news is music to Ottman’s ears.Ottman started Minds in 2011 “with the goal of bringing a free, open source
and sustainable social network to the world,” he said
He and his CTO, Mark Harding, have worked in various non-profits including Code To Inspire, a group that teaches Afghani women to code
He said his vision is to get us out from under social media’s thumb.“We started Minds in my basement after being disillusioned by user
abuse on Facebook and other big tech services
We saw spying, data mining, algorithm manipulation, and no revenue sharing,” he said
“To us, it’s inevitable that an open source social network becomes dominant, as was the case with Wikipedia and proprietary
encyclopedias.”His efforts have paid off
The team now has over 1 million registered users and over 105,000 monthly active users
They are working on a number of initiatives, including an ICO, and the site makes money through “boosting” – essentially the ability
to pay to have a piece of content float higher in the feed.The company raised $350K in 2013 and then a little over a million dollars in a
Reg CF Equity Crowdfunding raise.Unlike Facebook, Minds is built on almost radical transparency
The code is entirely open source and it includes encrypted messenger services and optional anonymity for users
The goal, ultimately, is to have the data be decentralized and any user should be able to remove his or her data
It’s also non-partisan, a fact that Ottman emphasized.“We are not pushing a political agenda, but are more concerned with transparency,
Internet freedom and giving control back to the user,” he said
“It’s a sad state of affairs when every network that cares about free speech gets lumped in with extremists.”He was disappointed, for
example, when people read that Reddit’s choice to shut down toxic sub-Reddits was a success
Instead, those users just flocked to other, more permissive sites
However, he doesn’t think those sites have be cesspools of hate.“We are a community-owned social network dedicated to transparency,
privacy and rewarding people for their contributions
We are called Minds because it’s meant to be a representation of the network itself,” he said
“Our mission is Internet freedom with privacy, transparency, free speech within the law and user control
Additionally, we want to provide our users with revenue opportunity and the ability to truly expand their reach and earn rewards for their
contributions to the network.”
