To build flourishing 21st century societies we need Web infrastructure designed to elevate humanity. The current social media paradigm, with skewed incentives and business models, is a structural threat to a free society. Healthier social media is possible. Existing institutions and efforts have proven insufficient to create a viable countervailing force to big tech. We need a new social media institution for the Web, that protects privacy and ensures data sovereignty by default, and that ensures a true competitive marketplace for apps and service providers. In order to achieve this vision it is essential that we convene a holistic design process to develop a plan for fostering a human-centered social media ecosystem.

The Mosaic Foundation is currently raising funds and recruiting a team to execute on phase 1 of the project. We estimate the budget for phase 1 to be $250K.

The World Wide Web is the core infrastructure for an interconnected global society. We owe its success to its broadly-accessible and non-proprietary nature. There is only one Web and as such it is not subject to competitive forces and should be what it is, a public good. 

Over time, a few privately held Web platforms have become nearly as ubiquitous as the Web itself, but unlike the core architecture of the Web, they operate without transparency and accountability to the public. Facebook, for example, is a profit-maximizing global corporation that mines the personal data of billions of users and sells user attention to the highest bidder. Its power to shape public opinion and even sway elections is unprecedented. 

Social media is a new type of tool that can be used for good or ill. It can give advertisers and power hungry propagandists dramatically enhanced powers they did not have before; or it can be a democratizing tool that enables the masses to collaborate towards making a more equitable and sustainable world for everyone. Mosaic is building a platform that is decentralized, more like the Web itself, protects privacy and data ownership by default, and enables cooperation at scale. It is critical that we not only stop the damage being done by the existing social media paradigm, but also that we design and implement a social Web platform that enables a new era of flourishing democratic societies.

The existing social media paradigm comes with significant drawbacks, from privacy issues and data breaches, to how it impacts mental health and the functioning of democracies. The Web is being used, wittingly and unwittingly, to accelerate the breakdown of society.

The largest social media companies have become the de facto public squares of the internet. We defer governance of these digital public squares to unaccountable and nontransparent corporations, who have incentives aligned with advertisers, not the masses that use their apps. We need truly public digital spaces in order to maintain a free and open marketplace of goods, services, and ideas. Allowing the current trends to unfold, will only further damage our personal and social health, our democracies, and infringe on our civil liberties.

We can use the power of the Web for good, to bring about the dawning of a connected, abundant, and stable modern global civilization. Currently, we have social networks designed to hijack our attention and maximize shareholder revenue–there is nothing preventing us from building social networks designed to enhance the democratic process, to bring people together around positive, shared interests, and to reinforce our higher selves over our base instincts. 

We can build a social media ecosystem that reflects values like those found in the Internet Bill of Rights ,a new platform optimized for the public good. We can have customizable and transparent algorithms that can be audited for how they impact the health of society. We can have secure social media that protects privacy and civil liberties by default, and that enables data portability, ensuring a truly competitive marketplace of social media services. We can grow a social media ecosystem that empowers content creators to author their own destiny, gives users full control over their data, and provides full transparency into mechanics that shape our social media environments, and ultimately, our global culture

We are not stuck.  A far better paradigm of social media is possible.

Governments: It is tempting to point to potential government regulation as the solution. Proper government regulation is certainly part of the ideal solution but the government moves too slowly and often lacks efficacy. Good regulations won’t fully address the issues relating to the current social media paradigm, due to the complexity of social media and the prominent business models driving design decisions.

Big Tech: Some Big Tech firms may play a positive role in the reformation of social media but their shareholder model does not maximally align their incentives with the common good like a new civic institution could. Big tech is bound by a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value, often optimizing for time on site, rather than time well spent. The financial bottom line rules over the ethical one.

Ultra Wealthy Savior: We could hope and wait for an ultra wealthy savior to act as a benevolent dictator but that is not solid ground to stand on. 

Cryptocurrency: While there has been a creative upswell in the “crypto” community a fundamental flaw with most cryptocurrency projects is the wealth-concentrating nature of the underlying “tokenomics”. Speculative cryptocurrencies do a great job of attracting investment, but they don’t optimize for the public good in the long term. There are human-centered software architectures that don’t require a cryptocurrency. 

Open Source and Non-profits: Open source projects and non-profits are critical to creating regenerative social media,but to date they are too resource-starved and disjointed to create a viable countervailing force to big tech.

Web Standards Bodies: Standardization bodies like the World Wide Web Consortium are also critical. Any open social platform should be built upon, and maintain alignment with Web Standards, but Web standards alone don’t ensure interoperability or ease of use for developers.

To achieve a positive social media paradigm we need a new institution for the Web, built from the ground up, in a way that optimizes for the well-being of people and society. It needs a governance structure with incentives aligned with the common good. It also needs to be economically self-reliant. Accomplishing this will require an ecosystem of organizations to succeed. 

A nonprofit could provide core software and standards that ensure interoperability between solutions providers, while ensuring that civil liberties and data sovereignty are baked into the platform. The objective is to serve users, creators, and the public good, not shareholders. For-profit entities will provide services to the network and attract necessary human and financial capital required to build out, operate, and maintain a lean competitive ecosystem. 

This is the running hypothesis for the organizational ecosystem  design will be explored along with other models during the design process. The long term vision is to build a lasting internet governance institution worthy of the cause.

This is the running hypothesis for the organizational ecosystem  design will be explored along with other models during the design process. The long term vision is to build a lasting internet governance institution worthy of the cause.

Other efforts have attempted to create an alternative to the Facebooks and Twitters of the world but have fallen short for a variety of reasons. Most solved some aspect of the problem, while neglecting an essential requirement to become a viable replacement. These oversights range from architectural decisions to poor marketing, to the lack of a self-sustaining business model. 

Mosaic recognizes the potential to bring together a multidisciplinary community of technologists, as well as creative subject matter experts from across the social sciences, to design a human-centered social media ecosystem. The breadth of the social media problem makes it challenging to create viable alternatives to the existing attention-maximizing advertising revenue-based models. It is only by linking disparate efforts through an open source and economically sustainable ecosystem that we can hope to compete with Big tech. 

Balancing the numerous issues relating to the social media problem, such as mental health, democracy, privacy, data ownership, and online harassment, won’t be an easy or simple task. The objective is not to create a perfect solution to the various social challenges that social media presents, but to dramatically improve on the existing special media paradigm. The assumption is that a diverse, dedicated and skilled team can design an ecosystem development plan that is capable of delivering social media that is far better than the status quo. 

This is the running hypothesis for the organizational ecosystem  design will be explored along with other models during the design process. The long term vision is to build a lasting internet governance institution worthy of the cause.

Other efforts have attempted to create an alternative to the Facebooks and Twitters of the world but have fallen short for a variety of reasons. Most solved some aspect of the problem, while neglecting an essential requirement to become a viable replacement. These oversights range from architectural decisions to poor marketing, to the lack of a self-sustaining business model. 

Mosaic recognizes the potential to bring together a multidisciplinary community of technologists, as well as creative subject matter experts from across the social sciences, to design a human-centered social media ecosystem. The breadth of the social media problem makes it challenging to create viable alternatives to the existing attention-maximizing advertising revenue-based models. It is only by linking disparate efforts through an open source and economically sustainable ecosystem that we can hope to compete with Big tech. 

Balancing the numerous issues relating to the social media problem, such as mental health, democracy, privacy, data ownership, and online harassment, won’t be an easy or simple task. The objective is not to create a perfect solution to the various social challenges that social media presents, but to dramatically improve on the existing special media paradigm. The assumption is that a diverse, dedicated and skilled team can design an ecosystem development plan that is capable of delivering social media that is far better than the status quo.

The current thinking is that development of the Mosaic Platform MVP will consist of roughly six steps. Only the first two steps are well defined. Subsequent phases will be better defined during phase 1 and phase 2

Phase 1: Document design requirements and define the design process

Phase 2: Execute on the design process

Phase 3: Develop a proof of concept

Phase 4: Build a minimum viable product

Phase 5: Pilot/Beta testing 

Phase 6: Marketing and production launch 

Phase 1 will be focused on creating a detailed framework for the design process and doing the outreach to line up the requisite subject matter design participants. It will be necessary in phase 1 to do an analysis of the open source and open standards landscape that can be drawn on for the phase 2 design process. Part of phase 1 will also include collecting an impeccable set of design requirements and further articulating a shared vision that we can rally around. 

Phase 2 will see subject matter experts convene in a variety of working groups to explore each design category, with cross pollination between the groups to ensure a holistically designed ecosystem. Outputs from the various working groups will consist of a set of recommendations and design documents that will be compiled into a full ecosystem development plan that will inform future phases of work. 

List of Some Design Categories

1. Technical requirements, 
2. Mental and social health considerations
3. Graphical user interface development 
4. Business models
5. Governance
6. etc..