Fairdrop — Decentralized, Anonymous, Secure File Transfer for the Free World

Datafund Just Launched Decentralised File Transfer - Interview with Co-Founder Gregor Žavcer

Hey, guys! Thanks for taking the time to reach out to us. We’re always excited to meet and greet with projects around the globe, and why not take the opportunity to dig a little deeper into Datafund.

Surveillance capitalism, data slavery, human automation, loss of privacy… Reading your blog makes the reader feel like we’re about to lose our freedom. Has that happened already?

Not yet, but we’re inching there slowly, day by day. And, as trivial as it may seem, the loss of freedom has the loss of privacy at its core. Let me first give one simple example. China has already banned over 20 million people from buying train tickets because of their low social score. Social score is derived directly through constant surveillance of every aspect of Chinese people’s lives. It’s the most blatant example of how loss of privacy has a direct impact on real life.

Sadly, the Western world is moving towards a watered-down version of this dystopia as well. Think of facial recognition, which more and more stores across the US are beginning to use without any rules. This can have disastrous consequences. Let’s say you’re falsely identified as a criminal by the store’s facial algorithm. Suddenly, you are banned from buying the most basic provisions across the US. It’s even worse if a police algorithm recognises you as a criminal.

Another example of privacy intrusions are insurance companies. They have algos that can monitor a number of parameters in your car in real-time. Imagine a scenario where you have to urgently pick up your child from the kindergarten on the other side of town. You sit in your car and immediately, because of the pressing need, you become much more aggressive in your driving. Out of the blue, your insurance goes up because the parameters that always watch how hard you step on the gas, if your seatbelt is on, how hard you break… told your insurer that you present a higher risk of an accident. What if this higher premium is the final straw and you can’t afford to pay other bills? Do you sell your car and with it the means to get to work? Your world can crumble.

Gregor Žavcer, Datafund (Photo by Aljoša Masten)

The potential for mistakes, abuse, misuse and sanctions for actions, taken out of context, is baffling. But the real danger to our freedom is the weaponisation of our data against us because it can change our civilisation at its core. As Shoshana Zuboff put it, the goal of surveillance capitalism is to automate our behaviour at scale in order to drive us toward desired and guaranteed outcomes. Brexit was just the taste what such targeted psychological cues en masse can do. Add genetic data, brain-to-computer interfaces and body implants into the mix and nobody knows what will come out of it.

These examples are crucial to understand that in the digital age freedom starts with privacy. We desperately need a break with the old paradigm and create a new one. This was the main reason why we started Fair Data Society.

Fair Data Society is then your battlecry for freedom? To gather troops in a fight against a dystopian future where privacy is a luxury?

Yes. Fair Data Society is the antithesis to the reality and possible future painted above. It’s a call to action that carries hope.

Fair Data Society logo (Photo by Datafund)

And we need hope. We are being conditioned that we can’t have any other system. Kings used a similar justification for their rule — our power was given to us by God, it can’t and must not be challenged. The justification today is somewhat similar: if we want to have a widespread use of technology at low cost, then this is the only way. What is left out is that the price to pay is privacy and freedom.

Again, this is not true. The key thing to know is that the current slave-master mode of client-server relations is just one possible reality, nothing more. We have the means, the knowledge and the vision for something better. Fair Data Society is our vision of a data-driven society in which we want to live. Fair Data Society is win-win for all stakeholders involved.

We based it on the Fair Data Society principles that put the individual and his/her basic right to privacy at the centre. This is the foundation and we want to ensure that it remains intact in the future. We want Fair Data Society to become a truly inclusive community of projects that offer high quality open source technology, centered around the individual and governed by the community through a Decentralised Autonomous Organization (DAO).

And the first step to that goal is a Decentralised Altruistic Community (DAC) on Giveth. Giveth is a perfect starting point because it offers unprecedented transparency and accountability, but most importantly, it offers us the platform to create a community. We can’t stress this enough: Fair Data Society can only succeed if others join. The task is simply too big for one company to pull off.

Our hope is to galvanise others to become part of the Fair Data Society and help “install” privacy as a basic human right, while building open source solutions that will remove the need for centralised ones.

Those are truly big plans. Can we even have an open source-based economy?

We believe it’s possible, at least in part. High value-adding services can run on top of open source software. Do you know any server that doesn’t run on Linux? At this point, let’s not also forget that data for social good is being underutilised. We believe that social enterprises in a fair data society will be the key enabler, recognising new value.

With the Fairdrop file transfer dapp you have already pried open the doors to a world that doesn’t hoover up insane amounts of data but still works. How is Fairdrop different?

Fairdrop is a legitimate disruptor of its centralized counterparts and the cornerstone in the story of Fair Data Society. It doesn’t collect any personal data or run on any centralised server, it’s encrypted by default, we can’t see anything you do with it and in a few months we’ll start testing 100 GB transfers over the Swarm network. All this, while user experience isn’t sacrificed. When using Fairdrop, all the complexities of blockchain are hidden. Fairdrop passes the “grandma” test, everybody can use it. We encourage developers and advanced users to download the code and run a local copy. Let us know what is the biggest file you have successfully transferred.

Not collecting any personal data and 100 GB file transfers. Do you have any other aces up your sleeves?

There’s also the Fair Data Organizations Registry campaign on the Fair Data Society DAC on Giveth. It is a novel way for organizations to send a strong signal how committed they are to respecting privacy when collecting personal data. We’re at the very beginning with this, so it will take some time to develop. But since Giveth is a platform for donations we’d be very grateful for any possible contribution. As mentioned before, Fair Data Principles are also available to the public to read, comment and contribute improvements. They can also support our weekly newsletter A Week in Privacy and we’ll be announcing more in the upcoming weeks.

All of these actions serve as building blocks that will hopefully help build a new paradigm of a data-driven society that puts people first.

The ICO era is over, how do you intend to fund all this development?

Actually, we believe that “crypto winter” is good. It is consolidating community around core values while get-rich-quick projects have left. Still, this doesn’t address our funding which is a challenge. The DAC, where people can donate, is one potential source of income. There are also grants and hopefully the movement will also grow through participation and donations from other web3 projects. In general we see Fair Data Society as a multi-token universe, so most likely we’ll see all kinds of approaches to funding from various teams. Still, no matter the choice, funding should be in line with Fair Data Society principles and values.

Where can we and our readers follow you online, use your services or otherwise support your business?

They can drop us a message, file or photo at our Datafund mailbox on Fairdrop, talk to us in our Riot channel or donate to our campaigns at the Fair Data Society DAC on Giveth. They can also read our blog and/or subscribe to our newsletter.

Acknowledgements:

Big thank you to the whole Datafund and Fair Data Society teams. None of this, even this interview, would be possible without team work. Special thanks goes to Andrej Čebokli for all the help and constructive criticism on this interview.

Thank you for your time!