Crypto Social – Help us fight for privacy

As tokenized communities become more real, as more people begin to understand how crypto can protect their privacy, or even freedom, as identity continues to evolve, crypto social is growing. Since Vitalik gave a talk about it (and even before) crypto social has been a rapidly evolving dimension of Web3 and crypto technology in general.

People are tired of the big tech status quo. Facebook (sorry, ahem, Meta) has more data on people that don’t even use their services than could fit in entire books. And when people try to hold them to account, to GDPR, to any reasonable standard of privacy, they ignore both law and decency, because they know such measures are ineffective. Amazon exercises more control over internet infrastructure than most countries. Google knows everything you have ever searched for, and uses that information to make you believe you need this product or that service. Or sells it to others, who use it to the same ends.

Your data is their profit. Because it is also their data. Your significance to them is merely easily they can turn violations of your privacy into money.

The principles of crypto stand in harsh opposition to this status quo. And we (here at Status, but here in crypto as well) are building the technology to create a future without these problems.

Here is Corey Petty, core contributor at Status, at ETHDenver giving a talk that explores some aspects of this coming future of crypto and Status.

At the core of every crypto organization, every hackathon, convention, and even crypto Twitter, are communities embodying these principles. In other words, crypto social is a matter of “when”—not “if”.

Crypto social is the future. We demand nothing less.

These communities need infrastructure that matches their principles. This is a call to action for the entire crypto community to reduce our reliance on Web2 products and services, to reduce the reliance on AWS, and to live our principles as we work. We cannot take half measures with this. The recent action of the Canadian government freezing assets have demonstrated plainly that your right to financial freedom in the existing systems is a myth. Your right to privacy is similarly fictional.

We can change this. We are. Help us.

Status is committed to decentralization and privacy, which is why we are in the process of de-googling ourselves. Status uses Google documents for some work and communications. Status uses Google Calendar. Status is also in the midst of transitioning away from these Google services. We are determined to become self-hosted, self-reliant, and ultimately self-sovereign. We are always trying to minimize our Web2 dependencies, but it can be difficult to lose the convenience of some of the world's most powerful software companies. Yet, that's exactly why we must.

Call on your organizations, DAOs, start-ups to do the same.