Most people don't care about privacy, security, and robust data storage

  • One can log on to almost anywhere with their Google, Facebook, or Twitter account already.

  • Single sign-on can’t help with adoption, because it will in fact be another set of credentials to remember.

But yea, on the long run, it’ll be nice.

This is half the response to this post because it would’ve been off-topic in that thread…

We’re at agreement about the importance of those things; people do need security and privacy. They use it without a thought when they have it. And they flock towards an alternative without a thought if it’s shinier, should it be more secure or less secure.

Privacy in the real world is explicit: the clothes you’re wearing, a curtain on your window, a letter in an envelope. You can assume that if somebody is far from you they can’t harm you. Yes, there are extreme exceptions, but that’s the point: we know they are extreme.

On the internet, all of the threats to our privacy and security are extreme. However, our real-life instincts blind us to them. We are left open to all kinds of dangers, and we can’t even see! Nobody runs from dangers they can’t see…


So, the mission is important: give people privacy before it’s too late.

But … the people don’t care :pouting_cat:

No problem! Just trick them with an awesome product! :smiley_cat:

Security and privacy are hidden features.

What’s invisible can’t be an incentive. The average end user is not somebody from this forum of a few hundred (?) active members, who care about these things. They won’t even notice their app, running atop SAFE, is incomparably more secure and private than anything they used before. All they care is if they can do what they do easier with it than with other apps.


EDIT: A DropBox alternative (already proposed here) would be an obvious choice for such an app.

It needed to be able to sync regular files, which would be a deviation from the SAFE principle, where all your data is on the network, but it would bridge the gap between the two paradigms: one could keep an offline copy on their drive, as they are used to, but they could also forsake that option and open them straight from the “cloud.” Over time, they would start to realize that there’s no need to keep a local copy, and thus became “fully converted” SAFE users.