What are products that don’t screw us, their users? We think it boils down to three things:

  1. We have control over our data. We can have access to all of it. We can move it somewhere else and take it away from a vendor who has lost our trust. We can delete it if we so like. We can do all sorts of things with it, only limited by our imagination.

  2. We have options. It means no lock-in. It means we can stop our relationship with the vendor, and go somewhere else, without substantial loss. For example, open-source in inherently forkable, so an open-source project cannot really lock us in. But even if a product is not open-source, it might still not lock us in.

  3. Nothing happens behind our backs that we don’t know about or cannot prevent. For example, no selling of our data, our click stream, or behaviors, even in aggregate. Unless we specifically consent and can revoke that consent at any time.