// Turning the lights on in digital advertising
Like other pioneers of her time, Kalar foresaw the transformative potential of data and the direction the advertising industry was heading. She founded Standard Media Index in 2008 with a mission to make the $500 billion ad market more transparent and effective. She negotiated and secured exclusive contracts with the world's largest media agencies and built data infrastructure within their systems, enabling them to track their ad spend and trade more effectively.
“All the advertising money was being traded in the dark. It was like turning the lights on in a massive $500 billion global industry,” she said.
As media companies and publishing declined, digital platforms like Facebook grew, pushing ads into people’s feeds without any regulation. Media companies, who were eager to capitalize on the power of social media, posted their content and encouraged their audiences to follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
“The media companies all gave Facebook their content for free, directed their audiences away from their own websites, and eliminated any capacity to monetize themselves. They surrendered all control and power to big tech—and that was the beginning of their absolute control,” Kalar said.
// Data: the new gold
To most people, it seemed harmless at the time. But Big Tech companies like Facebook saw what others didn’t: They could capture user data to "monetize people’s attention" like never before. The goal shifted from connecting people to maximizing engagement.
- In 2009, Facebook’s (now Meta's) ad revenue totaled just $764 million. One year later, that number more than doubled to $1.87 billion.
- If you fast forward to today, it is the ad revenue that puts the big in Big Tech. In 2023, Meta generated $131 billion in ad revenue. In the years between 2009 and 2023, Meta’s advertising revenue has grown an average of 42% every year.
// Misalignment between platform, advertiser, and user
If you’re the platform, all of these ads mean massive revenue and profits.
But for advertisers, reaching people is a numbers game. Kalar observed nonprofits and charities struggling for years to use algorithms to drive donations. Today, standing out is even harder—the average engagement rate for a Facebook ad in 2024 is just 0.05%, meaning one click for every 2,000 views.
And if you’re the person watching the ads, it’s exhausting. Your family and friends have been replaced in your feed with ad after ad after ad.
To Kalar, this was a profound shift: “We the people have become the largest unpaid workforce in human history.”
// Digital resource extraction
Kalar did some quick math. She estimated that Meta's 2023 revenue from its North American users translates to an average of just under $400 per user per year (based on Meta's $67.5 billion in revenue from North America and its 210 million North American users—180 million Americans and 30 million Canadians). Coincidentally, this is the same amount that nearly 40% of Americans don't have to cover an unexpected expense or emergency, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve.
This was Kalar’s epiphany moment. The current big social platforms were taking money out of the pockets of everyday people—money that could be used to cover expenses, support charities, or get a step ahead.
Kalar started asking questions: Was it possible to keep the social and content experience pure and give people the choice to watch ads when they wanted? Was it possible to radically transform the economic model and share the money from advertisers with people and charities?
// Power to the people
Kalar began imagining what a new social platform could look like—a platform that returned the power to the people and gave them both the ability to control their privacy and safety online and flip the ‘attention economy’ on its head.
Kalar envisioned a platform that empowers users, prioritizes privacy and safety, and upends the attention economy.
With this, WeAre8 was born. The name represents the eight billion people on earth and the infinite power within each of us.
WeAre8 is a social media platform with three distinct features:
- Protection: WeAre8 has used AI to eradicate toxic content and has redesigned the social media experience by combining three social feeds into one—a TikTok-style entertainment feed, and Instagram-style close-connections feed to stay apprised of what your friends and family are up to, and an X-style text-based conversational feed called Flows. Most importantly, these feeds operate with what Kalar calls a "conscience."
- Freedom: WeAre8 gives its users (they call them citizens) control over their experience—from algorithms to data portability. Anyone on the platform can control who they see in their following feed, link out to the web from every post, and leave the platform and take their content with them.
- Money: WeAre8 is built on a reimagined citizen-centered economic model where the money from advertisers is shared with the people on the platform every time they watch an ad. Each citizen has a wallet connected to their account, and every time they watch an ad, they get paid. Sixty percent of all ad revenue is returned directly to citizens, charities, creators, and planet-impact projects. Citizens of WeAre8 can then choose to keep that money for themselves or donate it to a cause they care about. In stark contrast to the business model of today’s incumbent tech platforms that consolidate profits and power in their network effects, Kalar and her team have designed WeAre8 to redistribute money and power from the center to the periphery.
“Protection, freedom, and money are the baseline,” Kalar said, “but what is really exciting is the human creativity and positive impact that will be unleashed in this new world. We are going to see a radical step change in social entertainment when people are inspired and incentivized to do the thing that they love—to be creative. With unlocked economic flow and when people feel a sense of purpose and the power of positive collective action, then everything changes.”
// The partnership with Frequency
With just under two million users on their platform, WeAre8 is expanding into new markets and is set to scale fast. At the Project Liberty Summit in November, Project Liberty, Frequency Network Foundation, and WeAre8 announced a collaboration to integrate WeAre8 with the Frequency blockchain, allowing its users to regain control of their digital identity.
“Project Liberty brings all our citizens another layer of independence, protection, and freedom and we are excited about what our partnership means for people when we are all truly free from Big Tech control. Our collective technology and aligned values are the perfect marriage," said Kalar.
The partnership with Frequency is one of many partnerships WeAre8 has created. They’ve partnered with over 100 publishers, including Warner Bros, Discovery, and the BBC, over 350 charities to address issues like food insecurity, corporations to promote mental health, European football clubs, publishing networks like Public Good in the U.S., and airlines to spread kindness. They already have over 250 of the largest advertisers in the world backing them, including McDonalds, Spotify, and Nike.
// Looking back, looking ahead
WeAre8 represents just one in a galaxy of innovations, models, and platforms that make up an internet of the people, by the people, and for the people.
In the last year, we’ve explored many of the people, partnerships, organizations, and ideas that envision a people’s internet:
If there’s one idea that defined Project Liberty’s work this year, it’s the unwavering belief that the best version of the internet puts people in control—giving them a voice, a choice, and a meaningful stake in their digital spaces. Like WeAre8, we imagine an internet built for humans, not just users.
It is this conviction that drives us into 2025. We look forward to seeing you in the new year!
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