Google and Facebook are the 1%

And what we’re doing about it

Ask anyone with a webpage whether they are satisfied with what they can earn by adding ad space on their page. Ask anyone with a YouTube channel whether they are getting paid fairly for what they are giving their users. While content creators starve, Google and Facebook are generating enormous revenue streams from advertizing.

Now ask advertisers how confident they are that their advertising dollars are well spent. These monopolies can get away with holding “auctions” that are hidden from public view. Can we trust that the auctions are fair? Can we trust that publishers are getting paid the percentage that these ad networks claim they pay?

We want to disrupt this market. We can’t do it if we play by their rules. So we are writing a new rule book. Under our rules there is no ad network for advertisers to pay. Advertisers pay individual consumers whose attention they want. Content producers don’t wait for crumbs from the ad networks based on clicks or views. Instead, producers get paid directly by the people who view their content. A new cryptocurrency makes all of this possible and easy for users.

Having thrown out the old rule book, we can also ditch the severe constraints that have been placed by Google and Facebook on the formats allowed for published content and advertisements. (Have you noticed that the most compelling websites don’t have ads on them? It’s not a coincidence.) We’ll let consumers decide which content and ads they will accept and those they won’t. We want people to innovate.

You don’t want us to become the next monopoly. So our network uses 100% open-source code and will be operated by an independent not-for-profit organization. Where this is going, Google and Facebook will find it difficult to follow.

We’re calling this new network Channels. We hope you’ll be hearing a lot more about it very soon. In the meantime, visit our website or follow us on Twitter.