Synereo: The Decentralized and Distributed Social Network

We present Synereo, a next-gen decentralized and distributed social network designed for an attention economy. Our presentation is given in two chapters. Chapter 1 presents our design philosophy. Our goal is to make our users more effective agents by presenting social content that is relevant and actionable based on the user’s own estimation of value. We discuss the relationship between attention, value, and social agency in order to motivate the central mechanisms for content flow on the network. Chapter 2 defines a network model showing the mechanics of the network interactions, as well as the compensation model enabling users to promote content on the network and receive compensation for attention given to the network. We discuss the high-level technical implementation of these concepts based on the π-calculus the most well known of a family of computational formalisms known as the mobile process calculi. 0.1 Prologue: This is not a manifesto The Internet is overflowing with social network manifestos. Ello has a manifesto. Tsu has a manifesto. SocialSwarm has a manifesto. Even Disaspora had a manifesto. Each one of them is written in earnest with clear intent (see figure 1). Figure 1: Ello manifesto The proliferation of these manifestos and the social networks they advertise represents an important market shift, one that needs to be understood in context. The shift from mainstream media to social media was all about “user generated content”. In other words, people took control of the content by making it for and distributing it to each other. In some real sense it was a remarkable expansion of the shift from glamrock to punk and DIY; and like that movement, it was the sense of people having a say in what impressions they received that has been the underpinning of the success of Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and the other social media giants. In the wake of that shift, though, we’ve seen that even when the people are producing the content, if the service is in somebody else’s hands then things still go wonky: the service providers run psychology experiments via the social feeds [1]; they sell people’s personally identifiable and other critical info [2]; and they give data to spooks [3]. Most importantly, they do this without any real consent of their users. With this new wave of services people are expressing a desire to take more control of the service, itself. When the service is distributed, as is the case with Splicious and Diaspora, it is truly cooperative. And, just as with the music industry, where the technology has reached the point that just about anybody can have a professional studio in their home, the same is true with media services. People are recognizing that we don’t need big data centers with massive environmental impact, we need engagement at the level of the service, itself. If this really is the underlying requirement the market is articulating, then there is something missing from a social network that primarily serves up a manifesto with their service. While each of the networks mentioned above constitutes an important step in the right direction, they lack any clear indication