Our plan B to save the Internet we love.
The Slow Web Initiative is a think tank focused on the Ethical Renaissance of the Internet.
We live in a world where a handful of companies control everything we do, own, and share online. It's the golden age of computational intimacy: a data-hungry and surveillance by design environment that pretends to be our friend.
To save the Internet we love, we must take another direction. It is time to rearchitect the Internet so that we own and control our digital belongings, our data, our feeds, and our identities.
We had control, and we lost it.
To get it back, the team behind the Slow Web Initiative has also launched Polite, the first "self-sovereignty" platform for our content and our culture.
Why do we need a Slow Web?
Most platforms put their needs over their user's best interests. By making monetization, data harvesting, and the constant capture of our attention their only priorities, they made technology indigestible and unsufferable.
The Slow Web embodies the idea that we can use technology again for our benefit, to develop healthy habits. An equivalent of "Organic Food" for Technology.
We believe Slow Web will play an important part in the healing process of the Internet.
The Slow Web principles:
The right to Transparency.
Design products that do not hide what they do with our content and personal data.
The right to Non-manipulative design.
Create products that are not pushing us to do things we had not intended to do.
The right to full Privacy.
Combine strong Privacy while keeping the full benefits of the product.
The right to Leave.
Give users the power to quit a service, remove all their data, and terminate the relationship without any hassle.
Work with Us :
Inspired by Tariq Krim's work, the Slow Web Initiative has gathered a small group of developers, designers, and legal experts to look for better and ethical alternatives to technology's unrestrained growth.
Our mission is to promote a new way of designing transparent and ethical online services and platforms to the end-user.
We believe that lighter and surveillance-free software is also good for limiting the energy impact on climate change. (entropy reducing computing)
Behind the apparent simplicity of the digital economy, there is a new geopolitical complexity that we help our clients unravel: The Tech Cold War, Deplatformization, GDPR vs. Cloud Act, the opportunities around Data residency, Data portability, and self-sovereignty.
We advise companies, institutions, and governments to help them transition to a digital sovereign model that relies less on big Tech and more on locally grown technology providers.
We summarize our ideas and vision in our blog and newsletter re:compute. If you would like to work with us, you can contact us here.