This post is a continuation of Time, Meaning & The Internet: Why We Built Flatline.
Loss of Agency
Unfortunately, privacy is no longer the norm on digital platforms. We are no longer sure where our information is stored or how it is used. We are made to sign aggressive terms of service that we cannot possibly read or comprehend. We grant full access to our devices for applications that use our own data against us. Applications read data from other applications without consent. Our contacts are read. Our location is used to track our behaviours. Cookies track us across experiences. We live in a digital world of surveillance.
Data has become a currency and commodity to be exchanged or sold to the highest bidder. We no longer have agency over our data. It is trapped and transferred at superluminal speeds. The unsettling feeling that your phone is “always listening” is hard to shake, and in a crucial sense, it’s true. While your microphone may not record every word, everything else is documenting your life. Your messages are read, and your engagement is meticulously tracked.
That uncanny moment when you mention something and immediately see a relevant ad is the direct, jarring proof of this reality. Every click, message, and photo leaves a trace, is copied, stored, and traded in ways few of us ever see.
The result is a quiet loss of agency. We no longer know where our lives go once they become data. Our data is sold and tracked across services, allowing us to be understood and manipulated by algorithms. The ebbs and flows of our digital experience lead us to places where we would not have gone.
Respect
A healthy digital world begins with respect. Respect for time, for attention, for the quiet work of living. Control is only part of the story. What matters most is trust: the confidence that what we share stays within the circle we choose. Artifacts of our digital life are now used without our knowledge. Entire industries have been created that aggregate our behaviours. Many platforms operate on a simple principle: the user is the product. The app might be free, but what is the true cost? We never got a say in this arrangement, nor were we ever given the chance to opt out.
Sharing is a deeply human need. We must tell stories to live; we have a deep human need for connection and storytelling. We need platforms that facilitate this activity without the burden and compromises of becoming a product. Our goal is to design systems that forget as gracefully as they remember. To make ownership visible and consent intuitive. When you share something, you should know who sees it, where it lives, and when it disappears. Privacy, at its best, isn’t about hiding; it’s about belonging without exposure.
We need better ways to document our lives, including our struggles, highlights, and small moments in between, without fearing they will be used against us. We need to be able to connect these moments to others. To share the struggles, to share all aspects of our lives with others without fear of judgment. Without fear of being lost in the void. Without attention-driven metrics and algorithms that control whether our experiences will ever be seen by others.
Private By Default
We believe that experience should be private by default and that no company should read those contents. No company should have access to your lived experience to be used and resold; to be used against your better wishes. Digital life should be as rich and complex as lived experience. Flatline builds on the belief that technology can protect intimacy instead of eroding it. It is a platform where your data isn’t an asset, but a relationship between you, your story, and the people you choose to share it with.
You should control how you interact with the digital world, with no distractions, where you have control over your data, and where you see what data has been shared with whom. That’s why we’re building a new way to authentically share and create moments, with privacy built into every facet of the application. For us, privacy isn’t isolation. It’s the freedom to share deliberately, allowing your moments to carry meaning without unwanted exposure. Our private-by-default foundation gives you the space to be open, but always on your own terms.
We believe in a world where users have control of their data, people are not products, and topical consumption isn’t encouraged. Depth and connection are the founding ideas. A place where you’re encouraged to reflect and live the life you want.
Privacy In Practice
We have chosen to design our application so that the contents of your Flatline are encrypted. In practice, this means your data will be accessible only to you. We are unable to access your Canvas contents or anything that you may choose to add to your Flatline.
- Your user information is used to decrypt the contents of your Flatline
- Sharing a Canvas utilizes that person’s credentials to decrypt the Canvas
- You can delete any data at any point
- You can always see who has access to what content
- You can always see which apps have been granted permissions
- You may choose to remove access and permissions at any time
- We will never monetize attention
Image depicting the eye of Big Brother from George Orwell’s 1984.
