I think that part of your privacy policy pretty much confirms my statement.
Nothing to be ashamed of. But for the communities that I am part of they are simply a slightly more real-time version than discourse.
The big difference being that on discord I donāt necessarily go back and review all the stuff that Iāve missed throughout the day
I think thatās key. When Iāve played with Sphere, I wonāt go back and find old messages, restart old conversations, quote previous wisdom etc. This feels more āpermanentā.
I donāt think so. I donāt have a particular position re Sphere - Iām just trying to explain how it feels to me, on the basis of my experience.
And to add to this, have you had the reaction you expected from the forum?
None of the topical social groups Iām on are e2ee, Slack, Discourse, Discord and a Facebook group.
Seamless cloud backup and sync negate any benefit e2ee would bring for me, even this discourse site is indexed by Google so not private at all, I donāt think Sphere is aimed at being a family and friends social media where private information might be shared.
So who is it aimed at? Simon says itās not B2B. You says itās not B2C
When I say not for family and friends I meant personal family stuff and close friends where youād share personal content, thatās better suited to one continuous chat , like a whatsapp one.
Itās a place for communities like local football leagues and online communities like Fintech chats, and yes for some of those scenarios Discord might be a competitor.
Thatās how I see it.
But one of the specific use cases they talk about is making group chats amongst friends easier with examples like splitting them into smaller sub-groups!
Maybe people have more friends than I realise 
The privacy policy is not up to date - TLDR is that it refers to a different product (company pivoted before I joined). Itās on my backlog to write the new one. Itāll be sorted before we exit our private beta, but as you can imagine thereās a lot of work on.
My position is that weāre carving out a middle ground between the two. We actually plan on adding features that exist outside of the app, and can be used even without an account, so you can see how E2EE would make that more difficult. For example, groups doing events may want to have a public facing page where people can RSVP just by entering their name and their email address. Then, if those people want to actually join that community, or share photos from the event, they would be able to sign up.
Yes - with the constraint that weāre still in private beta for the moment. We have groups using the product that are millenial, Gen X, but also we have Gen Z groups and some older groups too.
Target demographic is not age based, but essentially - communities who are outgrowing WhatsApp, who might well spin up a Slack but get stymied by the limitations of the free plan and the fact that itās aimed at businesses, and who wouldnāt be putting up the costs to spin up something like a Discourse forum. This is obviously getting more refined as we get closer to exiting private beta, but as one example, we have things like University sports societies and also local social community groups, like groups committed to reduction of plastic in x location or other social issues.
Absolutely - thereās a fair chunk of people from here in our private beta, giving us feedback and coming to our events, and weāre super grateful to all of them.
Slack = B2B
Whatsapp = B2C aimed mostly at family and friends
Weāre in the middle. Again, Discord probably the closest example.
Thanks for flagging - the public roadmap is my responsibility. It does have things past January - Bulletin Board which is on there is the current feature in development. The roadmap for the rest of the year is getting revealed on Thursdayās event, and will be added to the roadmap following the event.
The image on the Events card is an early mockup from before it was actually built. I need to update it, so thanks for the reminder!
This is what it looks like now:
Is there really a need to be so bitter about someone coming to a tech based forum to talk about tech?
If you dont like the idea thats perfectly fine (i also struggle to see its USP), but remember that this is simons job and personal goals, im sure you wouldnt like someone badmouthing your work as much as you are to others.
Think everyone needs to remember at times to reread comments and try to add in some positive spin to mellow out the harshness at times on here.
After a year in lockdown people need to be kinder
As we routinely get reminded every time Simmy makes a post (and it attacked for it), itās not a tech forum itās a Monzo forum with some discussion about competing fintech. For that reason alone the OPās personal goals are completely irrelevant to a Monzo discussion forum.
The OP is entitled to his opinion, everyone here is entitled to theirs and I am entitled to mine. Iāve been around on this forum long enough to know that The OP would not have tolerated somebody else pushing their product at monzos expense.
Equally Iām not badmouthing him to other people. Iām stating here in a civilised conversation that I like many people here disagree with the OPās point of view.
Remember one of the rules of this place which is not to interpret tone. The OPās personal goals are not relevant, the fact that he is using his position as a former member of staff is and in my (albeit limited) opinion unacceptable.
People like to evangalise founders of tech companies. It is impossible to talk about Apple and comment about them without talking about Steve Jobs/Tom Cook/Johnny Ive and it nearly always descends into Apple vs Microsoft or Apple vs Google or iOS vs Android.
Equally itās impossible to talk about Monzo and itās direction or Starling and itās direction with talking about Tom or Anne. In his conversation the OP is making his opinion heard through his position as the former manager of this place and representing his views under the guise of the company he now works for and whoās project he pushing here. If he cannot be mentioned by name without someone taking offence then I will continue to refer to him as "The OPā or just his handle 
oh wait his name is his handle.
If you donāt like what I am saying thatās your choice but you donāt have to read and it and you donāt have to flag it (which btw using flags to get a conversation shut down is just stupid)
I think itās crazy that this sort of thing gets $30m in funding. I just wonder how anyone ever manages to pitch a repeat of what is available with a very slight twist is a product thatās needed.
Maybe if youāre organising something and you pick Sphere as your group/organisation youāll force people to download and people may use it.
But most will just pick something that they know people already have.
I donāt think thatās fair to be honest. Iām the one that organised several Q&A sessions in the Fintech Q&A section with tons of other companies, some of whom are even competing in the same space as Monzo. We even had non fintech companies like Zevvle coming here and that was totally fine, weāve had other former employees like Kieran and Simon VC talking about their new startups. We were always pretty clear that this was an open progressive space for anyone working in tech. Itās not like Iām holding a gun to anyoneās head, just keeping people up to date with what Iām up to, as someone who looked after this forum for a long time.
It feels like this has taken a bit of an unfortunate turn.
Could I ask everyone to familiarise themselves with the Code of Conduct.
Please avoid the temptation to make things personal (the code of conduct is explicit on āad hominem attacks (criticising a poster personally, not their postā). Instead, if anyone thinks that something is inappropriate, please use the flagging system to alert Monzo staff.
Iām going to close this topic for a bit now. When it reopens, please keep the conversation on Sphere - not this message and not individualsā motivations for posting. As I say, those are issues for Monzo staff: @AlanDoeās inbox is open for that. As a community volunteer, and not a member of staff, unfortunately I cannot help with that.
Just catching up with this thread, and not going to make any further comments on it, the turns it took, or change to its state Peter has sensibly made, but I felt the need to 100% applaud this particular point from Nathan
Iām certainly glad you do!
I really hope Sphere succeeds and finds its market fit and Iām looking forward to continue to follow the journey!
This topic was automatically opened after 41 hours.
Ah, the encryption discussion is open again! Canāt believe Iād missed it until it had gotten locked!
Itās a subject Iām incredibly passionate about, and in fact the timing right now is perfect, as Iām working on a research paper with the OU that touches on this subject, and these resources youāve shared will be useful citations to help me better frame some counter arguments as Iām far too biased in favour of E2EE and have yet to agree with a narrative used in argument against it.
Should the encryption discussion continue, Iāll hopefully get involved this time!
