I remember how proud I was when Mark Zuckerberg first pledged to “connect the world.”

As an intern at Facebook in 2008, I saw the incredible possibilities of reconnecting with old friends, making new ones, and contributing to the knowledge of humanity. But then, something strange happened — connected to a part of the mission few remember. The part that came right before connecting the world: “making it more open.” And more open the world became.

Now, more than ten years later, we’re encouraged to share our sleep scores with our boss on Slack, broadcast our split bills on Venmo, post our guilty pleasure restaurant reviews on DoorDash, and of course, share all those vacation pictures too — lest people think we’re dead. Why share with just friends, our platforms ask, when you can earn likes from the entire world?

‍Public has become our default, and it’s no small task to change it back. Pages upon pages of incomprehensible settings stand between you and making your digital world a little bit smaller. While some of this data might seem pretty innocuous, when made public it can collectively paint a pretty accurate picture of our lives. And now, more and more of us share horror stories of being targeted online or in person, each and every day.

Is this just the new normal? Or can we hope for more from our new digital world?

We believe the solution isn’t to quit social media, as some advise — diminishing our voices and isolating those who might need connection most —  but a restructure of how we think about privacy online. Not as an opt-in, but as an opt-out. Not as a mandate requested by Legal teams… but as an ethical standard we’re proud to uphold.

There are many reasons to care about Block Party’s mission to create a safer online experience, but for me, it’s also very personal. I hardly have the words to convey what it’s like to live the consequences of a broken, lawless Internet that enables any annoying or awful account, person or bot, individually or coordinated en-masse, to violate your digital presence.