Holypaper | Our Vision
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The Newest Testament

Everything you can’t change happened for a good reason. If it did not, it is better to think that it did. Have Faith in having Faith, for Unlimited good vibes. Faith is its own power. Nurture it, and no boundaries can confine it. A boundless faith ignites an endless hope.An endless hope fuels an infinite love. This infinite love echoes the harmony of heaven. United, with faith as our beacon, we can create a glimpse of heaven on earth.

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The Problem

Our most popular platforms today are centralized systems of control that exploit us rather than empower us. Users and creators are disconnected from the value they create, and hold no ownership from their contributions to the platform. Instead, they and all users are treated as income streams where user data is collected, hidden from the users, and sold to further mine profits.

Outside of the incentive system being broken, we are letting ENGAGEMENT algorithms run the entire recommendation feed of every major social platform today massively effecting the moods and critical thinking skills of our peers and children. From a consumer standpoint, the algorithm that the user is force-fed content from is unable to be changed, which develops a toxic relationship between the platform and the user.

As we as a society continue to make progress in identifying physical and mental health risks, this engagement algorithm is finally shifting in the public eye for the evil that it is. While these algorithms may not get any less toxic and addicting, we can hope for new cultural boundaries to be set that will push people to live healthier lifestyles.

Just like with cigarettes the addictive nature was weaponized by corporations who saw the capability to hook users, before our culture caught up to vilify cigarettes for what they actually did. Luckily we largely overcame that battle as a culture and while the cigarette itself did not get any less addicting, we simply upgraded our cultural boundaries which matured to avoidance of these unhealthy dopamine sticks.

Now, we face dopamine flicks.

While returning to breathing air was the simple alternative for cigarettes, getting people to stop using these toxic platforms requires a healthy replacement of social, educational, and entertainment platform that is captivating, but empowering.

Social Media and content recommendation systems can either maximize value for individuals, or maximize value they take from them in ad based model. We are building to empower individuals rather than extract from them, betting on the inevitability of culture moving past this phase of extraction.

The more people who read this very paper can truly understand that choosing your algorithms is no different than picking to hang with a toxic or healthy friend. We as a society are finally understanding that our peers and children are being given information by a super toxic, algorithm designed to attempt to keep the user in bed all day doing nothing. Engagement algorithms maximize engagement at all costs, not factoring in the end user's mental health. Suicide and depression rates have been steadily rising in this current paradigm. We are the change.

Algorithms, like friends, are external systems that provide information and experiences. To make the toxicity of the engagement algorithm more clear let’s personify it as a human friend, Karen. Karen does not care about you or your well being, in fact the one thing Karen cares about is getting as much attention of yours as possible. Karen has zero regard for your mental health. In fact, Karen has no limit on what she wants from you. Her end goal is having you not move from your bed, or the couch, and if you want to talk to your friends, she only wants it to go through her. While Karen may be addicting to hang out with, I hope we have other friends who recognize how bad she is for you and helps you move on to greener pastures.

Karen would quickly get abolished from any friend group, but TikTok was the top performing social platform in 2021 and is continuing its rampage this 2022. By allowing user generated videos in full phone format, and providing an infinite feed of content, it took the social world by storm. Kids and Adults have become so addicted to it that it has taken over a majority of the social media attention sphere making its creator ByteDance now worth over $470 Billion. But many of users distrust the platform as it is a known centralized spyware platform with all data being fed to the Chinese Government. We hope as culture updates its operating system, use of Tiktok, unless they make radical changes, will be viewed as the low status cigarette consumption that it is.
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