Sonata Internal Company Policies

Motto : 'For the betterment of society'.

Policy: Strive for positive impact.

The decisions made and the directions taken by the company should have the positive impact of society as a main consideration.

Policy: Avoid decisions that will lead to a profit & growth driven future.

A profit and growth driven social media company will find it more difficult to make decisions that improve society, if they also impact profit or potential profit.

Policy: Seek alternative sources of revenue to ads while ensuring a fully free service at the point of use.

Ads bring one major benefit – allowing for platforms to be free at the point of use. However they are often unwanted and intrusive and often slowly start to cause to policy changes as a platform seeks to further monetize their users.

Seek out new ways to generate income that don't have these drawbacks, either through the platform directly, within sub platform level services, or within entirely separate services that leverage the platform's status, trust and influence.

Policy: Fairness for all involved.

All staff, contractors, affiliates and providers should be treated as valuable elements of the company and treated appropriately.

Policy: Freedom of expression and freedom to ignore

Users should be free to speak their mind as much as can be legally entertained. They should not live in fear of being banned by arbitrarily governed moderation. Additionally, users should not be forced to be subject to the expression of others.

Policy: Protect the planet.

Our planet is our most precious resource, decisions should be made with this in mind.

A push towards fully net zero power sources should be found as soon as economically viable.

Executive travel should be restricted as much as possible while conducting business.

Policy: Encourage critical thinking

Social media platforms have made it too easy to take on the opinions of others with little oversight, hindering the development of critically analysing topics or opinions. Strive to counter this as a feature of the platform.

Policy: Mandate through policy

All mandates the company's teams operate through should be based in policy doctrines and any decisions taken should be justifiable by the established policies.

Policy: Transparency throughout

Any data that can be made public, in that it does not compromise the privacy of a user or put the operation of the company at any risks, should be made public.

Policy: Political neutrality

Do not encourage or promote or discourage or demote any people or material due to their support or opposition of an active political party.

Do not allow any political party to spend more than 50% of the total published budget of their major competitors on advertising. Major competitors is defined as any party that has within the past 10 years received more than 25% of the vote in any major election.

Do not allow targeted political ads beyond country and county.

Policy: Stand up for our company values

When making decisions, always side with the established company values, being:

Support truth.
Honesty in all things.
Respect to all users.
Pursue innovation.
Protect authentic human expression.
Trust is earned.

Policy: Publicly support and pursue company policies externally

While remaining politically neutral, Sonata should actively support and promote our company polices by:

Defending and promoting free expression
Promoting and furthering the uptake of social responsibility by exposing and reporting on the exploitation of users by social media companies.
Promoting the concept of a third generation social media platform and all of the definitions which comprise it.
Promoting critical thinking.
Supporting and promoting people and institutions who aim to make or inspire improvements which relate to our policies.

Launching with the full principles of a 3rd generation social network fully realised will not be possible. These should be worked towards as a priority, with an estimated date set.

Policy: Take drastic measures where required to keep company values intact.

Unacceptable and ill thought out changes to law in the countries Sonata operates in may require relocation of servers, staff or the company itself.

Policy: Protect all users from outside parties

No user should suffer exposure of their privacy or data from outside sources seeking to obtain it through back channels.

Private requests for non public information about any individual user sent to Sonata for any reason and from any source must be rejected.

Exceptions:

When legally forced, through laws or through motions of the courts of Iceland
Data concerning individuals banned from Sonata for posting schedule 1 or 2 prohibited content may be made available to law enforcement.