Butterfy is a crowdsourcing platform for collecting the internet’s most constructive and insightful content. Designed from scratch to create a calm environment of diverse perspectives, mutual understanding and inner growth.
It all starts here, with you.
Screenshot of pre-alpha version.
Vision
The Vision of Butterfy is to create a more insightful and constructive information environment by conscious and responsible design. Butterfy starts as a crowd-curated collection of insightful links. To make it free of advertisements or other third-party interests, Butterfy has a new not-for-profit business model as an alternative to paywalls and the advertisement model.
How it works
Submit links to content that had a lasting positive impact on you, those links are now Eggs. See all Eggs others have submitted and at the end of each month select the top 7 most insightful Eggs you want to make into Caterpillars. Choose to go to the next level yourself, and see only Caterpillars, meaning less but better content.
Our attention is our life. Can we build a platform designed to respect that and to make us grow instead of scroll?
Submitted links start as Eggs and only transform into the next stage if enough people found them insightful after a month. The monthly transformation process works to ensure only the most insightful and constructive content gets amplified.
Learn more >
Butterfy aims to amplify content links that:
1. Are constructive
2. Broaden horizons
3. Expand knowledge
4. Challenge existing beliefs
5. Induce personal growth
6. Foster mutual understanding
7. Bring lasting insight
Butterfy collects links to existing content. Reducing and consolidating the good content already out there, instead of creating new noise.
Butterfy is not a social network. It's focused on the message, not the messenger. The content, not the person. So, you cannot follow people or see their preferred content. This should counter echo chambers where you hear only what you already think and believe. It should also level the playing field, giving every person the same chance of amplifying insightful content. Even if they don't have millions of followers.
Features
Butterfy is designed consciously and responsibly to work towards one goal: the creation of a better digital environment.
Butterfy's design decentralizes the power of amplification transparently to the people. Mid-term, the goal is to decentralize Butterfy on a technical level as well, building it on top of a blockchain. This should help, among other things, to make it impossible for power to accumulate in too few hands.
If you share insightful links and/or participate in the voting process, you should get heard and your actions should have influence no matter who or where you are.
Butterfy's Redistributive Incentive System means there is no need for ads or anything else which goes against the Vision of Butterfy. This frees it to be transparent, open and private-by-design. Everyone can participate in shaping and improving Butterfy, so that it truly becomes a project for the people by the people.
Every feature of Butterfy is designed not to make profit but to help achieve the Vision of a better information environment. This means, we together are free to continously and endlessly change and improve every aspect of this project.
Selectively induced randomness helps to ensure diversity and to prevent power structures from forming. It's designed to keep Butterfy dynamic and diverse.
No user level has more power than others, also not the paying levels. Because they get to choose only from content links brought to them by the previous levels, over which they have no control.
Quality requires time. Butterfy is a slow-content platform designed to prevent virality and short-term clickbait, in order to make space for the more timeless content.
All content links can be accessed freely and openly at the Egg stage. Or, you can choose to pay a monthly contribution for the privilege of seeing less but better links at the later content stages (Caterpillar, Chrysalis, Butterfy). Your contribution is split and redistributed to all who submitted and filtered the content for you, as well as the platform. This fuels Butterfy's circular incentive system.
Screenshot of pre-alpha version.
Pre-alpha
The Vision of Butterfy is a better information environment. The first step in trying to get there is a pre-alpha version built by amazing volunteers.
Test it by discovering the content links others have sent in and by submitting your own.
Team
Butterfy can only become resilient against polarization, bias, hate speech and other attacks, if it is run by a worldwide democratic and diverse community of people with different views and backgrounds. As long as they are united by one thing: their willingness to grow. This project is open to learn from everyone who is open to learn.
People currently working on Butterfy:
Felix Gugler | UX Design
Paula Härtel | UX Design
Oma Ikwueme | Development
Tony Morellá Llácer | Development
Vardon Hamdiu | Co-Lead (LinkedIn, Email)
Ninja Hoffmann | Co-Lead (LinkedIn, Email)
