There are costs to operating any social media platform: development of apps and backends, expenses for servers, facilitating communication, data storage, and network bandwidth—to name but a few. Traditional social media platforms hide these costs by making user data the product; selling to advertisers or other corporations to make a profit. This gives the illusion that such social media platforms are 'free', when in reality their users are paying with their social graphs and personal data.
For any social media platform that is truly committed to privacy, the model of advertising and exploitation of user data is impossible. Your data cannot be protected on free platforms, as the only way to cover operational expenses are through advertising and the exploitation of your data.
At NorthStar Social, we strive for a complete social experience that is inclusive to everyone’s ability to participate, without sacrificing privacy. To do so, we charge nominal subscription fees based on the amount of content you produce and features you utilize. Your subscription supports our ability to cover operational and development expenses—directly contributing to the advancement of private, decentralized social media platforms. Our local-first model allows us to reduce the largest costs of social media—data storage—and these cost reductions are passed directly to you. At NorthStar Social, our platform is the product—not you and your data.
The Social Media Relay Protocol is a decentralized toolbox for local-first social apps to connect and share encrypted social media. It sits alongside the AT Protocol to provide users with both public and private posting capabilities. Your AT Protocol decentralized identifier (DID) provides the identity to create your private social graphs to connect and share social posts. At the same time, it anonymizes with whom you are communicating to give you complete privacy.
NorthStar uses open source technology that are the building blocks for communicating securely over the decentralized network. We are interested in working with this community to further the advancement of this very important effort to restore user control of their data and will look for opportunities where we can contribute.
We intend to open source components of the NorthStar platform as they stabilize to encourage the development community to build innovative local-first social experiences. Things we’re considering for open source:
We intend to incorporate as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) to create a positive impact on society while also generating modest profits to continue innovating and providing desired features the community desires. Unlike traditional corporations, PBCs are legally required to consider the interests of all stakeholders, not just shareholders. As a Public Benefit Corporation, we'll legally be required to put the well-being of people's personal information at the forefront of our business. We believe this model will enable us to break the corporate stronghold over the internet and return the it to the people as it was intended.
