Social Media 1.0
For Good Humans
Back to basics. More authenticity, curation, consent, and transparency. Designed for stronger human connection and better mental health.
No AI, click bait, rage bait, manipulated media, dopamine hits, tracking or targeted ads. Designed to keep out toxicity, addiction, and misinformation.
Social media doesn’t have to be awful. Why does it feel so deeply misaligned with our needs and wants?
It all comes down to who owns it, how it makes money, and why it is isn’t regulated.
What exists today:
Ownership: Large social media platforms are controlled by billionaires, investors, or public markets with the explicit goal of maximizing shareholder value. Put simply, the goal is to maximize the wealth of its owners.
Monetization: These platforms make money by advertising to their users. The more specific the targeting (and thus likelihood of those people to buy the products), the higher the price a platform can charge its advertisers. As a result, these platforms track every session, scroll, click, tap, and more.
Governance: The harmful impacts of prolonged social media use are widely researched and well known but platforms don’t proactively self-regulate and governments are slow to pass laws that serve the public good. The average person has little to no voice in shaping future direction.
What we’re doing differently:
Ownership: EFGH is privately owned and is committed to not raising outside capital nor being acquired. The company’s ethos is rooted in remaining “unbought and unbossed”. Its mission is to maximize community value.
Monetization: EFGH does not track user behavior. It is unable to offer advertisers data points required for advanced targeting. Instead, the company makes money by allowing advertisers to sponsor its weekly newsletters and community dinners, and also accepts donations from users.
Governance: EFGH is governed by a community of neighbors who want to find safer, more productive, and more joyful ways of using social media. The community is diverse in age, ethnicity, and profession and includes parents of many school-aged kids. EFGH also regularly solicits feedback from users.
“Our needs and wants are fundamentally incompatible with how large social media platforms operate today.
If we want better, we must reimagine what good social media can look and feel like, design with intention, and build something new from the ground up.
That’s the premise behind EFGH: For Good Humans.”
Great for people who want:
Stronger relationships with the people they know and like
Better mental health and resilience
Non-AI generated content
Privacy
Consent
Transparency
Not ideal for people who want:
Social comparisons and silent stalking
Addictive, black box algorithms
AI-generated content
Hyper-targeted ads
Others to own their content and likeness
Data centers to power AI ambitions