A new social network, backed by members of Anonymous, hopes
to take on Facebook and the other social media giants with a commitment
to privacy, security and transparency about how posts are promoted.
The
site, Minds.com, has the same basic options as any other social
network: users send updates to their followers, who can comment or
promote posts that they read. But unlike its competitors it doesn’t aim
to make money from gathering data — instead, it encrypts all messages,
so that they can’t be read by advertisers or by governments.
The
app’s other big differentiating feature from other networks is that it
rewards people for interacting with posts, by voting, commenting or
uploading. Users are given points that can then be exchanged for views,
meaning that the posts of active members will be more promoted by the
network.
The
site describes that mechanism as a “network that rewards you with
reach”. As such, it is more straightforward than the Facebook algorithm —
which the company little discusses and seems to work on a complicated
mix of engagement, clicks and now the
time spent looking at certain posts.
The
site has been officially launched with desktop and mobile apps. But the
group behind the project has made it entirely open source, so that
anyone can contribute to the design and upkeep of the network.
An
Anonymous-affiliated page with over a million followers, ‘ART of
Revolution’, put out a call to support the site. “Let us collaborate to
help build minds.com and other open-source, encrypted networks to
co-create a top site of the people, by the people and for the people”,
the message read
