Why JewelBox

Hello, and thank you for your interest in JewelBox.

I have worked in technology for 2 decades and have seen the building blocks of technology improve by leaps and bounds. While optimists around us thought that this would be a strong force in making our lives better, a lot of us have been humbled to see how technology has just been a strong force — but not necessarily for good.

Problem 1: Lack of control over personal data mining

One aspect of this is large-scale and in-depth data collection on individuals who have no say on how this data is used. Ideally, this technology can make recommendations highly personalized, or easily connect friends, family and loved businesses together. In practice, this opens up these same connections to economic forces which can intercept and distort these connections. Common interceptions include incendiary and sensational news and politics in the same feeds where we connect with loved ones, and the use of notification channels (like your email, messages and smart phone app notifications) to drive targeted advertising and product upselling in ways that are hard to opt out of.

To understand why this has become a huge problem we need to take a step back to look at the economic forces at play here:

• First, distributing ads digitally is incrementally almost zero in cost. This is the direct reason for the huge problem we all have with digital spam.
• Second, modern technology is so good now that using mined personal data, it can create a targeted and continuously updated ad space for every individual. This significantly increases the 'ads impressions surface' compared to traditional regional and time-slot based advertising making advertising possibly the most lucrative business in technology.

Most other digital services offered by businesses will likely never be as lucrative as the digital advertising business. Thus, no matter what service you use - if you have personal data there - there is a strong temptation for the service to use it to target ads to you.

Digital ads fundamentally impose costs on everyone

The majority of people who see an ad are not likely to engage with it, even though a minority may find it useful. As digital ads distribution becomes cheaper due to advancements in technology, this makes it possible to continue to expand the number of people who see 'useless' ads to very large numbers.
This is a bad trend for consumers facing externalities from the ads businesses over which they have no control.

Is mining personal data itself bad?

Human instincts are a valuable guide towards thinking about privacy. We naturally wince against various forms of unsanctioned observation - for instance, ads for anti-depressants based off high-anxiety digital interactions or ads for charity-based shelter or food programs based on personal financial data. This evokes primal instincts in humans around safety, judgement and social inclusion. I believe most people would disclose such issues to only a few humans who have demonstrated wisdom and trustworthiness.
With that backdrop - a slow norm-shift into mechanical observation for mostly irrelevant ads seems like going against our most basic instincts. A good example of norm-shifted use of personal data is how personal fitness data is now being used to classify people into fitness categories and market stereotypical products to those categories.

Reality is often stranger than fiction - and it is unbelievable to see the reality of 'ads targeting' morphing into propaganda distribution. Personal data mining has morphed into hacking societies and distorting natural, organic public discourse. This has caused an immediate backlash and has shown to us that our human instincts were right and that the economic value add from personal data mining isn't towards larger societal benefit. The phrase 'privacy is obsolete' which previously was considered sage tech-wisdom, now equates to 'our societal structures are dead'.

Opinion: The problem is likely agency

We see the problem here with the lack of agency people have over their personal data. Gaining insight about oneself is self-awareness and is highly valuable. However, losing control over who sees that insight, and what they do with it is a form of deep personal vulnerability and at scale it is a form of societal vulnerability.

Thus, while we encourage apps to continue to experiment with different ways of using personal data, we also want to give consumers agency with their data.
We, thus, introduce a new deal for apps and their consumers: When consumers disengage from an app (which they can do at any time) they deny it any knowledge of themselves - as if that consumer had never signed up for the app in the first place. This new deal is encoded in the JewelBox app platform through a combination of end-to-end data encryption and strict access controls for consumer data managed by the JewelBox platform.

Problem 2: Lack of interoperability and consumer choice

The next big problem is that a few digital platforms have been able to aggregate digital services (and devices) and lock-in their customers with high switching inertia. After such lock-in, customers often find that their total cost of ownership for those devices and services is quite high and/or their experience with these services has degraded.

What's interesting is that given the improvements in technology building blocks, we should expect essential devices and services to be available at very low costs to consumers. However, the practice in the industry (which is exacerbated by the rise of a few platform monopolies) is towards

• planned obsolescence of devices to drive revenue, and
• use of non-interoperable services to ensure high switching inertia for consumers.

A big reason why consumers can't use an old phone or laptop is that it stops getting software updates. Without updates, the latest apps won't run on those devices. However, from a pure functionality standpoint, these devices are perfectly capable of running modern software.

Technology is also hard to DIY for the average consumer - unlike several other things which lend themselves easily to DIY. This makes it harder for people to adapt technology to their needs or lower its cost. DIY follows from standardization and interoperability of key parts and interfaces of larger systems - like plumbing for instance. Unfortunately, technology - at least the portions directly exposed to consumers - is extremely complex and the trend is towards lesser standardization and more silos.
A lot of this complexity is inherent in technology - and it is often good for technologists (like me) to have more options when building systems. However, the lack of standardization on the consumer side for choice and interoperability is not inherent and a deliberate choice by system builders.
A good illustration of this is the modern web standards and smartphone app platforms. The modern web works everywhere seamlessly without any interoperability issues whereas an app on one platform simply doesn't run on another despite the vanishingly small difference between the functionality provided by smartphones on different platforms.

Using personal data mining to subsidize devices and services

Often consumers will be given subsidies on these devices and services if knowingly or unknowingly they feed their personal data into the ads machine we talked about in Problem 1 above. This is a great deal for consumers especially if they aren't particularly sensitive to what they are using these services for. The digital ads machine currently provides a lot of free services for people.

That said, technology itself has become so good that it is possible to provide basic digital services to people at very low prices. At such low prices, quite a few consumers might opt-out of the digital ads ecosystem altogether.
However, it is an unknown if low-cost products would win consumers at the same rate as free products with personal data mining. Most tech firms are, thus, playing safe and refusing to listen to the negative sentiment with personal data mining and digital spam given the (obvious) growth they see with their free offerings.

Technology is so good that it can be abundantly made available to people. What's not abundant is the ability to make high profits off it without resorting to consumer lock-in, or digital ads.

We need a rulebook

My overarching concern is over consumer sentiment and trust with the tech industry. Tech-industry used to be the darling of the people and was entrusted with bringing big wins for society at large. As a technologist, I want to live in that world and it's concerning to see it slipping away every day.

It is worth constraining technology to respect human instincts. Consumer sentiment and trust in technology, once reversed, will be irrevocably lost for an entire industry - like how the managed-funds financial sector lost its consumer mindshare after the 2008 financial crisis and never recovered.

The tech-world moves very fast with its innovations. While innovation is good - and the driving force behind productivity and comfort - it also makes it hard for regulators to understand and appropriately craft policies for the good of everyone. Without a rulebook, the industry is structurally bound to optimize short-term gains to their larger detriment as I believe it is doing with the excessive personal data mining, the slow norm-shifting of usage of this data, lack of interoperability and consumer lock-in.

JewelBox: Principles

In the absence of a rulebook, it is worthwhile jotting down some of our principles upfront which we promise to follow despite short-term gains that can be had by violating them.

• Demonstrate respect for people's personal information
  
• Consumers should be able to provably and always deny any app of their personal data at any time of their choosing.
• Consumer personal information is, by default, used only for obvious and direct consumer initiated actions. Any use of personal data outside this is clearly called out.
• Demonstrate respect for people's attention
  
• Consumers should be in direct control of the overall volume of marketing messages they receive.
• Collectively, apps proactively respect these limits and adapt to the consumer.
• Choice and Interoperability
• Apps are made available using open technologies (like the web) wherever possible to ensure no platform lock-ins.
• Deliver lower costs directly using efficient and state-of-the-art technology.

JewelBox is not aimed at solving all problems in technology. However, it is directly aimed at addressing the two problems outlined with our opinionated set of solutions.

I sincerely hope that I meet like-minded people in my journey with JewelBox. If this resonates with you, I would love to hear from you.

- with ❤️, ritesh