The collective The New Digital announces the public beta of Sendox: an open source file sharing platform that puts privacy and digital sovereignty at its core. Sendox has been developed as a transparent and independent alternative to services like WeTransfer.
“We believe that digital freedom and autonomy are not luxuries, but fundamental rights,” said Frank Zijlstra, the initiator of The New Digital. “Sendox is a first, tangible building block in an open and sovereign digital ecosystem.”
Sendox is the first project from The New Digital, a collaboration of Dutch digital agencies, developers, and designers committed to an independent digital ecosystem. The collective aims to develop tools, infrastructure, and standards that are free from Big Tech influence, open, verifiable, collaboratively built, and that respect the digital autonomy of citizens and organisations.
Sendox is currently available as an open beta. This means the platform is still very much in development, and users are explicitly invited to test the system. Errors, bugs, or shortcomings can easily be reported, so the platform can be further optimized with the help of the community. Every user helps make Sendox more robust, user-friendly, and secure.
The public beta comes in the wake of the uproar over WeTransfer’s terms of service. Essentially, it means that people who send files via WeTransfer relinquish their rights. This allows the company to use the data – including the files sent – for purposes such as training artificial intelligence (AI).
After angry reactions from privacy organizations and users, this last point was scrapped, but according to experts, that does not change the situation. Some believe this could be the final blow for the digital transfer service that enjoyed trust for many years.
Source: WeTransfer faces open source competition after controversy over terms of service – TechCentral.ie
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