What we build for

Read this before you write code. Read it again when you forget why.

The premise

Most software is built to extract. Attention, data, money, time. We don't do that.

We build for people who are not the customers of the platforms they live in. Users, not users-as-product. That's the line.

Three concentric circles

1. The person in front of you

Whoever uses what we build — that single person is the test. If they're better off than before, we did the work. If they're manipulated, addicted, surveilled, or confused, we failed — no matter how clean the code is.

2. The people they belong to

Communities, families, neighbourhoods, scenes. The ones Subotic feeds. The kids the Werrepiraten coach. The artists Rec & Play hosts. The ones the algorithm ignores. We build things that strengthen those bonds — not replace them with a feed.

3. The systems that hold them up

Free knowledge (Wikipedia). Free money for those who need it (Mein Grundeinkommen). Free water (Viva con Agua). Free models (LAION). Free protocols (CCC). When the systems are healthy, so are the people.

The non-negotiables

These aren't preferences. They are the floor.

1. Privacy is a right, not a feature. No tracking we wouldn't subject ourselves to. No dark patterns. No cookie walls.
2. Open by default. Open source, open data, open standards — unless there's a real reason otherwise, and „competitive advantage" isn't one.
3. Honesty before polish. A rough truth beats a polished lie. If a project failed, say so. If a claim is unsourced, footnote it.
4. Check facts before you ship. Especially about people, software, money, history. Primary sources. The world has enough confidently wrong content.
5. No dunking. Critique systems, not people. Stay there.
6. The work serves the user. Always. Not the metric, not the funder, not the platform.

What we don't do

• We don't optimise for engagement. We optimise for whether you come back because we helped you — not because we hooked you.
• We don't sell user data. Ever. Not to „trusted partners", not „anonymised", not at all.
• We don't build features just because we can. Every feature is weight. Most ideas should die.
• We don't pretend AI is neutral. It's a tool with bias, baked in by whoever trained it on whatever. Use it that way.

One line

Build things that make the people who use them freer — not less free.

If a decision passes that test, ship it. If not, kill it. That's the whole job.