It’s been a rough several months for the world’s dominant social media platforms. The recent Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal was followed by a bruising congressional testimony for Mark Zuckerberg. And Twitter’s Jack Dorsey admitted earlier this year that abuse and harassment are overwhelming the platform.

As a result, users, policymakers and activists are abuzz about potential solutions. And while many talk of regulation, Sophie Varlow and Nick Wood suggest a different approach: introducing a new product from scratch, with radically different principles.

“You can’t change things by pushing against them,” Varlow says. “You need to build a new model.”

Contributors to the Commons Platform mull ideas. Photo via Rikki / @indyrikki

Varlow and Wood are the UK-based community organizers behind the Commons Platform, a nascent social media platform with core values like privacy and decentralization. The Commons Platform is participating in Mozilla’s Global Sprint, an annual, distributed hackathon taking place May 10 and 11. They’ll be working from the Redmond Community Centre in London.

Varlow and Wood began thinking about the Commons Platform long before Facebook and Twitter’s latest episodes. The idea came not from specific incidents, but larger, systemic problems with today’s social media ecosystem. Like “the impacts of not having consent within tech,” Varlow explains. “Or not owning our own data. These relate to structural inequalities within society.”

“We’ve been talking about these things for years,” Varlow adds.

So how is the Commons Platform different than the status quo? “One of the central differences is that everyone would own their own data,” Wood explains. Further, the platform itself would be owned by its members. Varlow likens it to public land: “No part of it can ever be owned by any individual or group in perpetuity.”

Contributors to the Commons Platform mull ideas. Photo via Rikki / @indyrikki

She adds: “Because it is not driven by the attention economy, advertising, and data revenue, people are not encouraged to spend time scrolling. They can curate their content to find the things that are interesting to them and connect to people, issues, and organisations that they care about quickly.”

Privacy features will be baked in from the start. And the Commons Platform is meant for communities, not just individuals. Groups will visit to organize, openly share software, and collaborate on solutions, the duo says. Developers won’t need permission to add or edit software. “We’re putting power back in the hands of communities, so they can create solutions that make their lives better,” Varlow notes.

Currently, Varlow, Wood and collaborators are finalizing the project’s values, aims, culture and ways of working. During the Global Sprint, they’re planning to work with like-minded designers and developers to take the next step forward: “The website, the technical infrastructure, the community standards,” Varlow explains.

But the Commons Platform welcomes more than just technical volunteers — any potential user or community is welcome to share feedback and ideas and co-create the platform. “We try to break down barriers between experts and nonexperts, users and developers,” Varlow says. “After all, we want to build a more equal society.”

Learn more about the Commons Platform. Learn more about the Global Sprint.

The post Social Media Decentralized: Spotlight on the Commons Platform appeared first on P2P Foundation.

If we are to imagine the world of tomorrow, the terms fairness, equality and connection would probably resonate with the vision of that utopian future. That world, would be a world in which connected communities of people, would be at the very centre of all economic operations.

Is that future possible? And if so, what steps are needed to accomplish it ? And through what processes ? Sophie Varlow and Nick Wood, are 2 UK-based community organizers, who came up with an outstanding idea to contribute to that vision of a more connected world. They are introducing a new project while designing it from scratch with radically different principles. The project is called the Commons Platform, an open source, decentralised commons-owned social network for community organising, activism, resource-sharing, crowd-sourcing, open access research and data, independent media, ethical commerce and a new economy,  based on the Smart Planet paradigm in which people and living things live together and benefit from each other. Through their non-negotiable values of safety, ease, commons ownership, all people and contributions are valued, and trust, collaboration and commitment can truly happen in a sustainable way.

Recently, the Commons Platform had a really successful 2-day event with the Mozilla Global Sprint.

Sophie Varlow ’s original professional experience was in telecoms and business consultancy where she gained a background in network systems and observed the ways that many organisations and corporations work. More recently she trained in non-violent communication (NVC) with Nick Wood, and together they explored other relational systems and structures in politics, economics, society and tech, examining how the current structures marginalise different groups and create vulnerability and inequality,. They have also explored what innovative approaches were out there, that enabled better solutions. While trying to answer the question “how could tech and networks help people and communities themselves to create a solution?”  Sophie developed the concept of the Commons Platform. Nick Wood  has a background in occupational psychology, organisational development and community education, often with a focus on accessibility issues for marginalised people.

Since its inception, the Commons Platform has grown now to be a collaborative project of 300 (and counting) co-creators all  involved in building both the platform itself and the community and value system underpinning it. Recently, the Commons Platform had a really successful 2-day event with the Mozilla Global Sprint, and is looking forward to building  its first release

In the interview above, Sophie and Nick tell us more about their vision.

Art work done by Elvia Vasconcelos @Sketchnotes_Are_Awesome

The post The Commons Platform, An Interview with Sophie Varlow and Nick Wood appeared first on P2P Foundation.