Dropon: a social network that gives a !@#$ about your privacy

Previously, we’ve featured the budding social networks, Ello and Tsu. Ello focuses on data selling and censorship. Tsu focuses on giving back the royalties that the user deserves. Following the trend of emerging Facebook killers, another social network has just dipped into the pool. We’ve caught this site on our crosshairs before it makes a splash on the airwaves. This social network’s name is Dropon.

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Dropon takes a path similar to Ello. The social network focuses on giving user’s privacy and going against data selling. But whereas Ello gives users a totally different interface akin to Tumblr and portfolio sites, Dropon feels very familiar. It is what Facebook might look like if it had a love child with Twitter and Google’s Material Design, complete with the familiar Facebook blue and the use of hashtags.

Unlike Ello and Tsu, there is no need for an invite to get into the social network. Just register as you would on Facebook or Twitter, which is refreshing from the hipster feel of the invite system used by the previous two. The network won’t ask for any sensitive information about users. You just need an email address and an adequate username (which doesn’t even have to be your real name) to get in. Everything else is optional: your location, your bio.

Dropon focuses on privacy. For that, we took a quick peek at its privacy policy. The site promises to encrypt all its data under several layers of protection. Everything is customized by the user: what information will be posted and visible to who. If you delete something (including your whole account), they don’t keep it in a hidden archive. It’s gone forever. They will not share your information with anyone at all, “unless required by law, legal process, or enforceable governmental request.” And because the company is based in Canada, privacy laws are much stricter as compared to other technologically leading countries.

Dropon still reserves the right to deny content “for any reason” however, as can be seen in their Terms of Service. Of course, such a provision is essential for social networks like these. We only wish it elaborated on what “for any reason” meant. It does give a glimpse on what it might mean when it gave an extra provision of disallowing illegal activities. Now, we’re just curious about the word “any.”

How does the site make money? The creator himself went on Reddit and answered a few questions in a thread about the site. Dropon will still have ads, but without using any infiltrative methods to do so. Whereas other networks sell information to marketing agencies, Dropon will ask these agencies to come to them. It will post ads according to pages associated with a certain hashtag. And a post can have only one hashtag to prevent hashtag spam. For example, a page with the #pizza hashtag will have ads tailored for pizza lovers. Ads will not be forced on any user’s page or content.

The site just started so we have no way of measuring how this system works. But from initial impressions, we were impressed by the simplicity yet familiarity of the social network. Like Ello and Tsu, Dropon’s promise goes beyond those (or lack thereof) promised by social networking giants, like Facebook and Twitter. It’s a strange time we live in when we actually take the time to pore over a service’s privacy policies and terms of service. Dropon wants to restore that comfort and security that we once had before this whole fiasco with user privacy and safety. Like the others, only time will tell if this budding social network goes beyond measly market shares and makes the waves everywhere online.