The movement for a democratic internet has begun, and Bleexy is leading the way.
We’ve allowed the digital realm to be overtaken by anti-democratic powers. It’s time for a revolution — starting with Amazon.
In 1215 AD a historic document was signed by King John of England. The Magna Carta guaranteed a set of rights the English Monarchy was bound to stand-by. Before this day the rule of kings was absolute. After it their power became more and more limited. The progress towards modern democracy had begun.
Today as citizens of the United States or Europe we take our democratic freedoms for granted. We do not worry that our homes or business will be taken away without cause. If we’re accused of breaking the law, we can expect a fair trial. In every electoral cycle we have the chance to kick out one government and choose another.
But in one area of modern life our democratic freedoms are being violated every day. The internet now dominates our lives. But your internet business can be taken away in a moment. You can be convicted of breaking online rules without trial. And none of us gets a vote over who rules the internet.
The founders of Bleexy believe it’s time for this to change.
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Argentina Moise had built a successful internet business when her life and living were torn down. Without knowing it, and in complete innocence, Moise’ business had violated a single term of service of the biggest internet platform in the world. A decision made by algorithm, with no human oversight, terminated Argentina Moise’s business in a moment. A decision made by Amazon.
Tens of thousands of businesses use Amazon Marketplace as a cornerstone of their operations. Amazon’s monopoly of online retail gives them little choice. From books to baked beans, if you have a product to sell online, you will almost certainly make most of your sales via the Amazon Marketplace. And more and more businesses are learning how vulnerable this makes them to the policies of Amazon.
Among the first to learn this lesson were book publishers. In the 1990’s, Amazon established itself as a cool, alternative bookseller, with an online store that allowed it to sell far more books, for lower prices, than bricks and mortar competitors. Once Amazon established its power it systematically monopolized the market for books, in a documented strategy of a “leopard stalking baby antelope”.
“Is Amazon violating the basic democratic rights of the individual?”
Of course, there’s nothing illegal about Amazon’s highly competitive business strategies. And it remains for governments to decide if those strategies are anti-competitive, triggering monopoly and anti-trust regulations worldwide. But Amazon’s size and power creates another, far less recognized problem. Is Amazon violating the basic democratic freedoms of the individual?
Access to the Amazon Marketplace and other online services is treated as a privilege. While rights must be granted to the individual, privileges can be taken away by the provider. In the age of kings, your property was a privilege. The king could take it all away. Over time we claimed those privileges as our rights. Is it time now to claim our rights in the digital realm?
What are the basic rights of online businesses?
The business Argentina Moise established was dependent on access to the Amazon Marketplace in the same way that every business depends on access to the infrastructure systems of a nation. Businesses in the United States or Europe have a right to access such systems. A right that can only be taken from them in specific circumstances, through a legal process. Businesses using the Amazon Marketplace have no such rights.
Many Amazon traders like Argentina Moise are penalized for “content violations”. Amazon Marketplace allows only one description for each listed product, even when dozens of sellers each provide the product. So, a basketball sold by twenty sellers on Amazon only has one product description. But the rights to that description belong to just one seller, who can then accuse the others of a content violation, and have their accounts shut down.
Amazon’s vast, automated marketplace is riddled with thousands of possible “violations”, that the accused business has little or no ability to control. And Amazon’s policing of its terms of service, much like a feudal king, is brutal and arbitrary. Some businesses thrive while operating in a clearly illegitimate way. Others, like the business of Argentina Moise, are deleted for random violations they have no chance to avoid.
Private Privileges vs. Public Rights.
Many people looking at Amazon’s crimes against democracy will offer a simple defense. Amazon is a private business. The Amazon marketplace is a fiefdom where Jeff Bezos can create whatsoever laws he likes, and enforce them how he wishes. But the commonplace “private business” defense is entirely invalid when a business grows so large as Amazon.
In 1214 AD the entire nation of England, occupying most of the island of Britain, was considered the private property of the king. The king’s ancestor, William the Conqueror, had won the realm in battle. It therefore belonged to him and his heirs, in the same way that your house belongs to you and your heirs, and Amazon belongs to Jeff Bezos and its other shareholders. England was private property, and the 3 million people who lived there had no rights. They could be evicted from their homes, taxed without limitation, even executed on the whims of the king.
The Magna Carta established very limited rights for English citizens. It would take centuries of struggle, and a major civil war, to grow the democratic rights that British citizens enjoy today. The public realm, that protects your rights to life and freedom, had to be carved out of what was, in the 1200s, a privately owned island.
Today we must think of the internet as a new territory. A land made of bits and bytes, filled with both opportunity and danger. And as is often the case, the first people to arrive in this virtual landscape have claimed large swathes of it as their private property. The question for the rest of us is how long we allow that claim to stand unresisted.
Leading the movement for a democratic internet.
Argentina Moise didn’t curl up and die after Amazon crushed her business. Quite the opposite. Moise became a leader in the tough fight now facing all online business, the movement for democracy against internet barons like Amazon.
“Bleexy aims to change the game around retail data…to make a new standard of democracy in the online world.”
Bleexy is Moise’ answer to the anti-democratic systems she experienced as an Amazon trader. To most customers Amazon looks like a retail business, just a very big one. But a major part of Amazon’s real business is in an invisible commodity generated in vast amounts by it’s customers — the valuable commodity of data.
In the first two decades of the internet few people understood that “free” online services were actually paid for with our data. Today that data is the lifeblood of the internet, gathered and sold by giant companies like Google and Facebook.
From its earliest days Amazon collected huge amounts of data on customers. How long we look at their website, what products we almost bought, and so much more. As a private company, Amazon keeps complete control, even of data that should belong to its customers and partner businesses.
Bleexy aims to change the game around retail data. It is building an open, democratic product data layer for the retail industry. Leveraging blockchain technologies, Bleexy will achieve what Amazon never could or would, a retail platform where customers and business partners keep ownership of their data. A new standard of democracy in the online world.
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Amazon is only the first target in the movement for a more democratic internet. All of the “tech giants” from Facebook and Google to Twitter and Apple, have grown to huge size and make vast profits because they have claimed private, non-democratic ownership of vast territories on the internet. These new territories are not physical, they are not measured in square miles, they are measured in gigabytes of data.
Customer data.
Your data.
Bleexy is an early leader, and a valuable business opportunity for its partners, in the struggle to reclaim our data from the tech giants like Amazon. Billions of customers around the world are coming to understand the value of the services provided by Google and others. Now a growing percentage of those billions are awakening to the precarious relationship they have with these barons of the internet.
Especially those people, like Argentina Moise, who built their business upon online platforms like Amazon Marketplace. These platforms are free, but to succeed on them requires a very large investment of time and money. Investments that are easily lost, in an instant, at the whim of companies like Amazon. Investments that can only be secure with a democratic platform like Bleexy.
Hundreds of thousands of businesses are now looking for open, democratic replacements for platforms like the Amazon Marketplace. And Bleexy is there to serve them, to build new and profitable business relationships around values of openness and democracy.
