Silver Lining

A Letter To TOKers

Following is the transcript, verbatim, from developers of a solution to our nightmare

— What is TOK

Dear TOKers:
Regardless of what it is that brought you to TOK, you are now officially becoming a
member of this maverick community. We are honored to have you here.

Since the fate of TOK is closely linked with every TOKer, the support and participation
of you are vital to the development of TOK. Hence, we've written this open letter in the
hope of presenting you with a comprehensive insight of TOK from following key aspects.

i. Ensure ultimate security in communication with technology
ii. Community autonomy mechanisms
iii. A free ecological prosperity of TOK

                 Ensure ultimate security in communication with technology

    TOK's intention is simple: to provide everyone with secure, private and reliable
communication tools through technological innovation.

    The core developers of TOK are a group of technology geeks, cypherpunks and
technology liberals from all over the world.

    Maybe some of us still remember the scenario that happened 20 years ago. When the
Internet was still new and had taken initial shape, we painted an idyllic picture of freedom
for every user. At that time, a buzzword describes "Nobody on the Internet knows you're a
dog." It's not so much a joke, but rather a cheer.

    However, in just two decades, these idyllic scenes have been smashed into pieces.
The Internet today not only knows who you are, but also knows you better than your family,
your colleagues, and even yourself. They hide in your shadow, silently recording every
article you've read, every route you've taken, every sentence you've spoken, every
purchase and every action you've ever done. So what? As Peter Thiel complained in a
speech, an entire generation of the best rocket scientists is using their expertise on
advertising with the most advanced AI algorithms.

    All of these started from the violation of freedom and privacy. In order to change this,
we have to start by protecting freedom and privacy.

    However, the situation has gone from bad to worse. It is incredibly challenging, if not
impossible, to find applications that really focus on protecting user freedom and privacy on
the Internet today. What's worse, some countries have passed laws to make violating
users' freedom and privacy mandatory. The vast majority of people's response to this is
lamentable. They have no choice but to obey or domesticate. They even fear and cringe of
real freedom and privacy.

    TOK was created to provide another possibility for people – a complete anonymous,
private and secure internet environment. To fulfill this goal, TOK adopts certain
unconventional and extreme technical means, such as random ultra-long ID, end-to-end
encryption, complete de-centralization, peer-to-peer communication etc. Compared
with the vast majority of internet applications today, these technical means are regarded
as swimming against the current.

Firstly, TOKers' data is entirely self-owned.
    Most Internet applications regard users' ID and identity information as their assets.
When registering as a user, you are required by the platform to disclose more private
information, or even authorize the platform to read into your personal address book. TOK
does exactly the opposite. When you register with TOK, users are presented with a ultra-
long, unique, never-repeating ID without the need of binding your phone number, mailbox
or any Internet ID. What's more, TOK will not read into any of your address books, thus
realizing 100% anonymity.

Secondly, TOK is completely de-centralized.
    Almost all Internet applications today, including Telegram – which tried to focus on
privacy protection and encrypted communication – are hosted by a centralized set of
servers responsible for storing and forwarding messages. This method, while easy to
implement on the technical level, grants the operator with supremacy. However, TOK
doesn't have anything resemble to a central server. The thing that provides communication
service is a group of TOK nodes (a group of computers) that constantly changes in size
and location. These nodes voluntarily devote their resources to help you achieve secure
connections with others, and make it nearly impossible to be blocked, monitored,
eavesdropped, interfered or compromised by anyone or any organization. TOK overcame
these technical bottlenecks and provides a better user experience.

Thirdly, TOK is end-to-end encrypted.
    Nowadays, most Internet applications provide services through cryptographic protocols
(such as HTTPS). But in order to collect and analyze user data, content of communication
of users is stored explicitly in centralized servers. Although your information is quite hard
to crack for unauthorized eavesdroppers, the central platform and their authorized
institutions can easily access the content. With TOK's end-to-end encryption, however,
any message you send will be encrypted before it is transmitted to the internet, minimizing
the possibility of exposing the content of communication to the network. Only you and thefriends you're talking to know the message.

Fourthly, TOK implements peer-to-peer communication.
    Peer-to-peer communication means once you and your friends have established a
TOK connection, logically, the communication between you and your friend would be
instant and direct. Like two people talking face to face in a secret room without any third-
party involvement. Therefore, no one can monitor or eavesdrop on you, and the
communication content will not be stored anywhere but your device.

TOK will:
NEVER steal personal information
NEVER compromise privacy
NEVER advertise

    In summary, compared with other popular communication applications, TOK exerts
every effort to protect your privacy and freedom, thus minimizing the possibility of
monitoring, collecting, storing and analyzing any personal data.

    Because TOK does not collect any private user data, TOK will not be profit from
advertising, let alone carry out so-called targeted advertising by analyzing your personal
data. Any means to induce your consumption with advanced AI technology is out of reach
for TOK. Furthermore, TOK will not expand its user base by sending requests to your
friends, and it will not gain any marketing revenue from your social relationships

    This is what TOK is: always put principles before interests.