The plebos Charter

plebos exists so that the writers who publish here, and the readers who follow them, are never held captive by it.

Platforms decay along a familiar path: they make themselves necessary, then costly, then extractive. The people running them rarely intend harm; the structure comes to reward it, and a structure that rewards betrayal will eventually find someone willing. plebos is an attempt to take the reward away. This charter sets out the commitments that attempt is built on. plebos is early, and much of what follows describes what it is being built to be; the charter is published now, as a draft, so that the people it is meant to serve can shape it and hold us to it.

Article I — The right to leave

plebos is founded on the right to leave. What keeps a platform honest is the freedom of the people on it to walk away and take what is theirs — a freedom that disciplines the platform whether or not it is ever used.

plebos therefore commits to making departure simple and complete: your writing exportable in full, in a form you can use elsewhere; the list of people who follow you yours to take with you; an identity you can carry to your own domain; federation, so your readers can follow you across the open web rather than being held inside this one application; and an open-source core, under the MIT license, that anyone can run independently of us. plebos does not count this promise kept until a writer can, in practice, gather everything and go without asking anyone's permission.

Article II — Paid for by the people it serves

plebos is paid for by the people it serves: those who choose to pay to host their work, and a small share of the patronage that writers earn. Both rise only when writers are paid and readers are well served. It carries no advertising, and it is not built to capture or resell attention — a platform funded by attention is, in time, obliged to take more of it, and plebos refuses that funding so that it never falls under that obligation.

Article III — Your readers are yours

The bond between a writer and the people who follow them belongs to the writer — to keep, and to carry away under Article I. plebos guards that bond rather than mining it: it does not sell, rent, or trade the personal information of writers or readers, and does not profile or track people in order to. The bond is never an asset on this company's books.

Article IV — What plebos earns is bound to what writers earn

plebos is built to earn alongside the writers on it, and only alongside them: from hosting their work, and from a small share — no more than four percent — of the patronage they are paid. That cap may only ever fall; it is meant to decline as plebos grows, and to fall away entirely for writers on a paid hosting plan. plebos draws no income from advertising, surveillance, or lock-in, and takes nothing from a writer beyond that share. It is built to prosper only when the people on it prosper.

Article V — Owned by its mission

plebos is built to be owned by its mission. A platform is finally only as safe as its ownership, so plebos is being placed under a dedicated steward: a holder whose defined purpose is this mission and cannot be rewritten to extract from it, with control of the company held apart from any claim on its profits, and an independent party empowered to refuse a sale or a repeal. So held, plebos will not take the kind of investment that demands growth at any cost, and cannot be sold to an owner who could undo this charter.

Open code for a single site is not the same as the survival of the city. So plebos will place its entire source — not only the self-hostable core, but the software that runs the commons itself — in escrow, to be released to the public if plebos ever ceases to operate, passes to an owner who will not keep this charter, or breaks it. Keeping that escrow current, and seeing that it releases when it must, is a standing duty of the independent party. Even the part of plebos we keep closed while we run it is held in trust for the people of the city, not withheld from them.

This structure — the steward, the independent party, and the escrow — is being established with legal counsel as plebos grows, and before any outside money or co-owner could enter. Until it is in place, plebos remains small and self-funded, with no outside owner to answer to, and this commitment is held — as the rest of this charter is — by its public record and by every writer's freedom to leave. Its particulars belong in the governing documents themselves; what belongs here is the commitment that the mission governs the company, and never the reverse.

Article VI — Amendment and repeal

This charter is meant to outlast the people who wrote it, including any future version of ourselves with reason to weaken it. It is public, dated, and versioned: there is no private edition, and every change to it is recorded here, in the open.

Once the steward of Article V is in place, no article may be weakened or repealed without the consent of the independent party, whose duty is to the mission and who has no stake in the company's finances. Until then, what holds this charter is the public record of it and the right of every writer to leave — and the work of building that steward is, itself, the first commitment plebos owes this document.

How this charter is ratified and changed

This is a draft. We will revise it together with our first writers, publish every version here, and — once the steward of Article V is formed — write the final text into the company's governing documents, where Article VI will govern how it may change thereafter. Tell us where it is weak: [email protected] or our contact page.