Pillar 01 · Value system
That is not a moral statement — it is a commercial one. Whoever earns from attention earns from conflict. Whoever earns from conflict will re-sort the network so more conflict appears. Whoever does not do that needs a different architecture.
„We connect people. We do not divide them."
Why this sentence has to exist at all
Large communication platforms live on you staying longer. You stay longer when something agitates you. So what gets shown to you is what agitates you. This mechanism is not hidden — it is openly documented and internally called „engagement optimisation". That families break apart in argument threads, that political camps harden, that neighbours stop talking — that is not an unfortunate side effect. It is the product.
We have no such business model. We cannot have one — our architecture does not permit it. Whoever owns no central server cannot run an algorithm that amplifies conflict. Whoever does not sell advertising does not need your attention. This is not virtue, it is design.
What the science says
John Cacioppo was a founder of social neuroscience. His finding, repeatedly confirmed in fMRI studies: social rejection activates the same brain regions as physical injury — the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. What platforms produce with read receipts, „X is typing" indicators, FOMO notifications and constant presence signals is not harmless. It is chronic low-grade pain signal. We refuse to add to it. Deliberately.
Jonathan Haidt (NYU) has compiled how engagement optimisation systematically favours outrage — because outrage binds attention longer than agreement. His data set shows: from roughly 2012, in parallel with smartphone saturation, anxiety disorders and self-harm among adolescents rise sharply. That is not „the internet in general" — it is the specific mechanism of algorithmically sorted feeds. With us there is no algorithmic sorting. Whoever writes, writes — in the order in which they wrote.
How the architecture delivers
The Matrix protocol federates like email: every server equal, every line of code public, no central platform reading along or sorting. If I want to write to you, I do not have to be your app provider. That sounds self-evident — but it is not. In the platform world, WhatsApp deliberately does not speak with Signal, iMessage deliberately does not speak with Android, Slack deliberately does not speak with Teams. Every wall is a business decision against connection.
With us there is no wall. Whoever runs a server is part of the network — equal to every other. Whoever does not run one can be on a public server. Nobody is excluded for using the „wrong" app. This architectural openness is the technical form of the principle above.
Concretely this means
Parents who lose their children to algorithmic feeds. Siblings set against each other in argument threads because that produces more clicks. Grandparents who no longer understand the world their grandchildren live in, because the world re-sorts itself per profile. With us there are no profiles, no algorithmic worlds, no outrage optimisation. Whoever writes is heard — by the person they wrote to. No machine in between.
The research is clear: recommendation algorithms push users towards extremes, because extreme content binds better. Filter bubbles are not theory but measurement. Whoever earns from this mechanism has an incentive to preserve it — even where it hollows out democratic societies. We earn nothing from recommendations, because there are none. You choose whom you talk to. Nobody „introduces" them.