Metamorphic

@narendra_solanki Thank you! This is something I come back to quite a bit and am open to suggestions (open to suggestions with everything) and it is actively in development. Prioritizing privacy has made this challenge a bit difficult. For example, we can't just go in and see someone's content (unless they've shared it publicly... in which case it's difficult but possible — public content is encrypted with a server-wide public key to enable it to be publicly available). Sometimes I want to quote studies that report that privacy protecting services don't increase the amount of abusive content on platforms, etc etc etc... but I think this is a really important issue and I don't want harmful content on the service... and I don't pretend to have an answer for it. Notes in no particular order: - you control who you connect to and in that way assert a level of control over what is shared with you (removing a Connection removes any content they've shared with you) - perhaps having a *responsibly* trained AI model to review content before its shared and set a threshold (this could be done without having to "know" what the content is) - people reporting abusive content (we wouldn't necessarily know the details of the account but we could possibly figure out which account is being abusive and restrict/ban/delete it) - do we only care about monitoring public content or content shared between people as well? - do we give people a choice, i.e. like a parental control setting only its whether or not to have content be reviewed? - for unwanted content, I do have plans for a feature where people can toggle whether they want to see a particular item (this would work when someone didn't want to completely remove a Connection) Goals: - protect people from unwanted and harmful content (on both sides — I would not want to have a person have to suffer through moderating harmful content as their job) - protect people's privacy With advances around AI and, in particular, Elixir's ecosystem around AI, I'm leaning toward trying an AI feature that essentially rates content before it's shared (allowing or not allowing it). I feel like that would enable us to review and monitor things without overstepping privacy and ability. And perhaps, since our goal is *not* to keep people glued to the screen (e.g. promote harmful content), it might actually work better.

@f0rest8 Thank you for such a detailed response. It's evident that you've given this a lot of thought. I appreciate your commitment to both privacy and user safety. The challenge of balancing these priorities is indeed significant, but I'm encouraged by your approach. The idea of using a responsibly-trained AI model sounds promising, especially if it can maintain user privacy while filtering out harmful content. Your dedication to ethical considerations, especially in not wanting someone to moderate harmful content as their job, is commendable. I'm looking forward to seeing how your platform evolves and addresses these challenges. Keep up the great work!

@narendra_solanki Thank you, I really appreciate this!

@manoj_11 Hi! I think I would say that the *main* difference is that it keeps you out of the pipeline of surveillance capitalism. What does that mean? Essentially, it keeps your data in your hands and not potentially used in some way to influence your behavior (current or future) in the real world by any purchaser of your behavioral product. It also means that most differences are behind-the-scenes or under-the-hood. One major way of doing that, which makes it more difficult for me as a developer, was to encrypt people's data to their password (asymmetrically). Meaning that I can't access anyone's data or "hand it over" because only someone's account password can unlock it. It's essentially public-key cryptography and enables people to share with others while still keeping the data private from anyone else's eyes. In line with that difference is that Metamorphic is in the business of providing a service to people rather than using people to fuel another service. This is philosophical, but it drives decisions around features and design, and keeps the focus on whether or not something will be helpful to a person or not. I think that seems fairly obvious and not unique, but is really important to put into practice. For example, I don't want you to be "sucked" into the platform. There are probably lots of reasonable arguments why that's not the best business decision, but I hope Metamorphic gets out of people's way — acts more like a tool in your garden rather than a drug. It's a lofty idea but there's nothing "tricky" going on or other business motives. Since it is a social network, there are similarities to other social networks, and I don't see that as a bad thing, more of a recognition of what is positive. Hopefully keeping things simple, data ownership/privacy/protection, and a focus on people-driven features keep the service meaningful to people. Perhaps on a final note, from a coding perspective, Metamorphic is built with Elixir and I think that provides and opens up a lot of really exciting under-the-hood features and possibilities that further benefit customers. As a developer, it certainly has enabled me to make Metamorphic a reality.