Fair Attention & Shared Benefit

Human Layer · Constitution · Platform Vision

FOUNDING PRINCIPLES / ATTENTION, OWNERSHIP & MONEY

Fair attention. Limited private enrichment. Shared benefit.

Human agency concerns more than how content is made. It also concerns who gets heard, what a platform asks of people's time and who benefits when it succeeds.

Human Layer should help someone reach an interested audience with their first publication, without first collecting followers or spending every day competing for visibility. Discovery should follow interests, understandable selection rules and voluntary human recommendations.

The same commitment must govern the money. Fair pay for work. Binding limits on private profit extraction. Transparent use of revenue. Surplus for public benefit.

A first publication deserves a route to discovery.

A creator should not need an existing audience to be considered. A viewer should not have to follow a social circle to find worthwhile work. Following people can remain useful, but follower counts must not become the price of admission to visibility.

Possible approaches include topic subscriptions, curated collections with reasons for selection, dedicated discovery opportunities for new creators and recommendations that people choose to give. Discovery rules should be public, understandable and open to challenge.

This is an opportunity to reach relevant people, not a promise that every publication will receive equal views or guaranteed attention. Fairness also requires protection against spam, coordinated promotion and favouritism.

Respect the viewer's time.

We want people to leave with something worthwhile: understanding, a useful question, a new perspective or a meaningful connection. Endless scrolling and constant activity should not become obligations for either viewers or creators.

Finite selections, user-controlled interests and clear stopping points are possible design choices. Public popularity counts should not dominate how work is assessed. The eventual model should be tested for whether it serves people's purposes, rather than treating more time spent as success by itself.

Fair compensation is part of the mission.

People doing necessary work should be paid fairly. Moderation, development, hosting operations, support and editorial work cannot sustainably depend on exhaustion or unpaid enthusiasm. Compensation should reflect real responsibilities and work performed.

Fair pay does not create a right to unlimited extraction. Founder salaries, bonuses, contractor payments and other benefits must remain visible within the governance system and subject to agreed limits. Payments to related parties must not become a route around those limits.

Success must not undo the founding purpose.

A popular platform should strengthen the shared mission. Its success must not create an unrestricted personal windfall through dividends, disguised fees, ownership sales or a takeover that removes the safeguards.

Financing must be compatible with this purpose. Any permitted private returns would need explicit, binding ceilings. Human Layer should decline funding whose conditions require unlimited returns, attention extraction or removal of the founding protections.

There must be no “we will deal with this after we grow” exception. The protections belong in the structure before the platform takes on financing or begins distributing surplus.

Where the revenue should go.

1. Keep the service running responsibly: hosting, security, maintenance, moderation and other necessary operating costs, including fair pay for actual work.
2. Fund necessary development: improvements justified by the mission and an openly explained budget.
3. Maintain reasonable reserves: enough to meet obligations and withstand foreseeable difficulties, with a defined target and review process.
4. Direct remaining surplus to charitable organisations: through published criteria, disclosed recipients and accountable decisions.

Development and reserves must not become indefinite excuses to retain every surplus. Budgets, reserve targets and charitable allocations need scrutiny. Donations must not be routed back to insiders through undisclosed relationships.

Make the rules inspectable.

The eventual platform should publish understandable financial reports: revenue, operating expenditure, compensation arrangements, reserves and surplus allocations. Personal privacy can be protected while the rules, limits and aggregate spending remain open to inspection.

Decisions about compensation, related-party transactions and charitable recipients need conflict-of-interest rules and meaningful oversight. No founder should be able to approve their own exception or unilaterally remove the financial limits.

The governing documents should protect the mission when leadership changes, new funding arrives or ownership changes. An independent review process should check compliance and explain breaches and corrective action.

What is fixed, and what still needs design?

The founding direction is fixed: fair discovery, fair compensation, binding limits on private enrichment and charitable use of remaining surplus. These are conditions for the platform we want to build, not optional branding.

The implementation remains open: legal form, ownership arrangements, exact compensation and return limits, reserve targets, oversight, charitable selection and enforcement. Those choices must be worked through with suitable legal, financial and governance expertise.

Human Layer is currently a Phase Zero initiative. No operating video platform, incorporated public-benefit structure, legally enforceable profit cap or charitable distribution mechanism has yet been established. This page records the founding requirements that such a structure must meet; it does not claim they are already legally secured.

This principle applies to the proposed Human Layer platform. It does not announce a change to the legal or financial arrangements of separate creative projects.

Build something worth trusting.

We welcome people who want to help design fair discovery and durable governance: creators, developers, community organisers, accountants and specialists in ownership and public-benefit structures.

If unlimited private enrichment is the goal, Human Layer is not the right project. If fair work, protected human attention and shared benefit are the goal, help us make these principles enforceable.

Start a conversation · Explore the platform vision · Read Constitution V0.1

Founding proposal · 30 September 2026. Direction and financial principles: Paul-Lukas Hertz. English structure and drafting developed with ChatGPT assistance. This page supplements Constitution V0.1; incorporation into formal governing documents remains to be completed.