Over a lifetime, this read could save you hundreds if not thousands of hours. It explains why Elastos’ Cyber Republic could empower you to reclaim the time that companies life Facebook and Uber are stealing from you every day.

Reclaiming our Time

Did you know that if you’re 25 or older, you probably have less than 10% of the total time you’ll ever spend with your parents?

I don’t mean to freak you out. My point is that we have finite lives, and we want to spend them accordingly. We may have a different idea of time well spent. But whether that’d be spending quality time with our loved ones or pursuing our passions or something else altogether, it is always spending time doing something we have chosen to do.

Usually when we think of unethical companies shocking images of oil spills or child labor come to mind. Here I want to show that the mundane can also be unethical. If we recognize time as our most precious resource, anyone attempting to take it from us against our will is causing us harm. This is precisely the business model of Facebook, but also Deliveroo and Uber. I know because I am complicit.

Facebook thrives on stealing my attention and selling my data to advertisement companies. Even then, I cannot help pressing “F” on my search bar first thing in the morning as I open my laptop. I’ve worked as a Deliveroo rider for some time. And I’ve experienced how difficult it is to get paid by them for deliveries I had made. Even then, I mindlessly open their app anytime I’m too lazy to cook for myself. I’m equally disgusted by the way Uber preys on its employees time, but that is never top of my mind when I’m going home after a night out.

At the end of the day, no one is visibly hurt by all this. But my time spent on Facebook or fighting to get paid by Deliveroo is time that was nonetheless taken away from me. As ex-Google Design Ethicist Tristan Harris puts it, in the face of this invisible violence “Time Well Spent” might be a crucial metric to reevaluate our relation with technologies.

How to get away with time theft

I can see two reasons why Facebook, Deliveroo or Uber have managed to get away with time theft. It’s difficult to properly account for the negative impact of these services (1) and the alternatives aren’t clear (2).

(1) It is difficult to account for the negative impact of these services.

The ways in which Facebook or Deliveroo benefit us are far more visible than the ways in which they harm us. After all, these companies have thrived on slashing the obvious financial costs. They have given us “free“ information, cheap food delivery and transportation. However they have done so at the expenses of our attention and time. And just because these are harder to quantify we should not assume that they are less valuable than the cash we’re saving.

On Facebook, the cost of “free” information is exposure to ads. Why is that a problem? Because Facebook’s reliance on ads means that it wants me to see as many of them as possible. To get sucked in. For that it curates content that makes me stay on the website. Some argue that ads support free content, but it may be more accurate to say that free content supports ads. And while we all strive to spend our time well, this isn’t easy when a service we use daily is designed to invade our lives. And steal our time.

If you think theft is a strong word consider this example. Amazon introduced two version of its Kindle paperwhite: with ads or without ads. The version with ads is $15 cheaper. Why? This is Amazon paying its readers for being regularly exposed to static and not-so-intrusive ads. Now ask yourself: when was the last time you received a cheque from Facebook in exchange for your daily dose of targeted ads and “sponsored content”? You can be sure that Facebook cashed in nonetheless.

What about Deliveroo or Uber? They do not prejudice me through ads. They have opened the doors of entrepreneurship to disenfranchised communities, sometimes in remarkable fashion (BCG, 2016). On this account, Uber and Deliveroo clearly benefit society more than they harm it.

But these platforms have connected tens of thousands of drivers and clients through exploitative agreements. Uber forces the drivers to declare themselves self-employed while collecting 25% of the revenues on rides (BCG, 2016). That is a lot of time spent working for someone else for alleged entrepreneurs.

We are mostly oblivious to the ways Facebook, Deliveroo or Uber harm us because they don’t fit well in our mental accounting models. We use their services because of our aversion to financial loss —Why spend money on a newspaper subscription or on a taxi when I can get free information and cheaper fares? — but neglect the preciousness of time.

Facebook, Deliveroo and Uber tax my time and yours because I am not very good at accounting for the time they take from me, let alone the time they take from you. Unlike money, time seems infinite.

(2) Even when we realize that these companies harm us, the alternatives are unclear.

Knowing all this can feel paralyzing. It’s no big news that Facebook, Uber or Deliveroo aren’t ethical geniuses and yet what can we do about it? Facebook may work actively to hijack my attention, but it has also become the nexus of my social life and I cannot imagine the number of people I would lose touch with if I deleted my account. Uber similarly punishes the drivers who opt out of it. Being on the platform — even if it means foregoing 25% of one’s total revenue — has often become a requirement to find customers.

Facebook and Uber have managed to make us believe that life is a zero-sum game. Every friend you make, you lose in time and attention. Any food you put on the table is time you don’t spend with your kids. But such tradeoffs only exist because of how gigantic these companies have become. Addictive design and advertisement are not necessary features of a social network. Exploitative contracts are not a financial requirement of tech companies. In fact, social networks, food delivery and transportation services could have a positive impact all throughout the cause-and-effect chain. And the Cyber Republic might fuel the transition towards less time-voracious technologies.

Why Cyber Republic could change that

Elastos proposes to create the world’s first decentralized operating system. Cyber Republic is the decentralized organization that will manage the community on the Elastos network. The Cyber Republic plans to fund 100 flagship DApps (Decentralized Applications) to operate on the Elastos carrier: the CR100. Given the role these DApps could come to have in our lives, funding the CR100 puts Cyber Republic in a unique position to make “time well spent” a standard for the internet of tomorrow. And to stand out.

Whether Cyber Republic decides to care about ethics or not might ultimately determine the public adoption of Elastos.

In my opinion, ethics could differentiate the Elastos ecosystem from its competitors more than technology. Google employees care about developing ethical products. Uber drivers care about making a decent living. Facebook users care about protecting their data. All along the value chain, people increasingly care about the ethics of technologies. And yet, none of Elastos’s competitors — EOS, Cardano — seem eager to turn this growing demand to their advantage. Their ethical stance? Something like “We provide the tech. What people use it for is not our responsibility”.

Cyber Republic has an opportunity to capitalize on the blunders of Google, Uber or Facebook and the short sightedness of EOS and Cardano by pushing forwards the technologies that want the best for us.

The blockchain community is an echo chamber of tech enthusiasts. But let me break it to you: most people care more about spending family time than about merge mining and hashrate.

Ethics is the one thing that brings together concerned users and talented developers. All Elastos has to do to spearhead this shift is demand that the DApps it funds on its carrier comply with certain standards that improve our lives. In the following part I’ve identified two standards that DApps should meet in order for Elastos to build an ethical ecosystem.

Two standards for an ethical Internet

(1) Cyber Republic should demand that the DApps on its carrier help make intrusive ad models obsolete. Blockchain projects can do so by giving us our data back and enabling monetization schemes that are mindful of our time.

In Elastos’s founder Rong Chen words “if you don’t own your data, you don’t own anything”. Your data is the password to your mind. The better companies understand your taste and opinions, the easier it is for them to curate content that will get you hooked. The blockchain allows you to reclaim ownership over you data by creating a space where you decide who gets to access it. It gives you a handle to shut the door on advertisers.

It also enables monetization schemes that do not steal your time or your data. Subscription is often pointed out as the solution to escape intrusive advertising and clickbaity content. Subscription advocates will tell you, if you care about your peace of mind and the quality of the content you consume, just pay for it. However a problem with the subscription model is that it bounds you to a specific content source. If I am researching a topic I might be interested in exploring multiple news sources, and would like to do so without having to subscribe to each outlet.

The company Coinhive has developed a solution that gets rid of paywalls and advertisement while rewarding content creators. If as a journalist I embed the Coinhive Javascript on my website, anytime someone accesses my articles, their CPU will mine cryptocurrencies and send them directly to my wallet. Coinhive exemplifies how the blockchain could overcome the zero-sum game that Facebook presents us.

Cyber Republic central value is “Security and Freedom by Design”. Demanding that the DApps on the Elastos carriers work against intrusive advertising is simply living up to Rong Chen’s vision. After all, isn’t freedom of mind the real freedom?

(2) Cyber Republic should demand that the DApps on the Elastos network cut middlemen, allowing service providers on online marketplaces to have complete agency over their income generation.

The blockchain can power networks of car drivers to operate an Uber-like system without third party intervention. On such networks, developers contribute algorithms then let drivers independently interact with customers without taking any cut. For developers to gain from such a model, they only have to require the users to pay in a token that they created and that they have a given quantity of. This way drivers are given complete agency on how much they make. They are genuinely self-employed, and unlike in Uber’s case, don’t have to pay dividends to their invisible boss.

Under the current situation, getting rid of Uber means giving drivers their weekends back. No less.

This is not fantasy. In decentralized systems, developers and managers are not incentivized to prey on their workers or their customers, on the contrary. Since they get richer as the value of their token appreciates they seek to expand their network by satisfying all stakeholders.

What is required for Cyber Republic to really make a difference.

This two-item list of ways in which Cyber Republic could spearhead a movement of ethical tech is far from exhaustive. There is a myriad of ways in which the blockchain could help steer the direction of technologies towards more humane technologies. But my key point is the following: the mindless scrolling can stop and Uber drivers can get their weekends back if organizations like the Cyber Republic set clear intentions to push forward standards of time well spent.

Decentralized Operating systems and blockchain ecosystems are at a point where they can forever shape the way we interact with technologies. The question today is: Will the DApps running on the EOS blockchain or the Elastos carrier ever be scrutinized for their ethics?

Cyber Republic can push forward DApps that want the best for us because unlike Facebook Deliveroo or Uber, it has nothing to gain from hijacking people’s time. Cyber Republic can thrive on the satisfaction of its users and service providers, not on the time stolen from them.

If you want technologies that respect your time, here’s what you can do.

Share and give claps to this article: the best way to get Cyber Republic and the Elastos Foundation to care is to show them that we care. Let the Cyber Republic know what kind of role you want technologies to play in your life on the Telegram channel. Read more about Time Well Spent or listen to the Sam Harris podcast featuring Tristan Harris

In my next article, I will outline a decentralized solution for Elastos to screen for ethical DApps.