Do Better

A tremendous amount of work has gone into baking in principles from the beginning about the type of company we want to be, and how we want to treat people - users or not. For example, there are zero (0) cookies on this page. We're not tracking you in any way. This is antithetical to the way most companies choose to operate. We've all experienced getting punched in the face by a dizzying array of cookie popup requests with hundreds of companies you don't know. It's a poor experience and it's always struck me as shady.

Companies use this data in order to make decisions about you, or how best to make money off of you. It is bartered, traded, and sold. I won't be a hypocrite: we're a for-profit company. It is an imperative to make money. However, there are ways to do that without compromising on decency.

We're making a calculated bet that through transparency and an obsession with your privacy and security, we can at least start off by differentiating ourselves. Like many of you, I've lived through the transition of the Internet from its earliest days to its incarnation today. Some things were always bound to be predatory. Companies all along the way have found ways of monetizing that often bordered on the unethical, illegal, or just plain creepy.

Others have found ways of rent-seeking and extracting every cent they can while using monopolistic regulation to defend themselves to the detriment of their customers. I'd like to start off on the right foot with you and make some really simple, basic commitments.

1. We will never share your data with any party we are not legally required to.

I can't promise you that we will never suffer a security breach of some kind, or that if receive a subpoena we can just ignore it, but I can promise that we will treat your personal data with the same respect and care we would our own. To put a finer point on this, we've architected and designed Decombine to be a self-sovereign platform. We operate our own infrastructure and we have no vendors at this time that we store user data of any kind in.

2. We will never implement dark patterns or other manipulative tactics to get you to do something you don't want to.

It's kind of crazy that I have to say this. If you're not familiar with dark patterns, I can assure that you actually are, you just didn't know what to call it. Dark patterns are the ways in which companies manipulate you into doing something you don't want to do. Whether it's a subscription service that's impossible to cancel, or a website that makes it difficult to find the 'no thanks' button, these are all dark patterns. We will never use them.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.