Privacy by default
No trackers, no third-party analytics, no ad scripts, no web fonts phoning home. Static-first: a host serves files and cannot see what anyone does with them. No accounts or databases until a project genuinely earns them.
Shared standards
An open contract for humane digital tools.
Defining and democratically evolving these standards is the Institute's core work. Every site in the ecosystem is built on them, and they're meant to guide other organizations too.
Calm by default
No engagement traps, autoplay, infinite scroll, streaks, or dark patterns. Success means you get what you need and leave satisfied. Motion is gentle and always respects reduced-motion preferences.
Legible & accessible
Real text, never text baked into images. Generous reading width, visible focus, a skip link, keyboard-first interaction, and WCAG-AA contrast. Built to be read, audited, and reasoned about.
Interoperable
Semantic HTML, Open Graph and a sitemap on every public page, and system fonts so a page renders the same offline and everywhere. No lock-in by construction.
Says what it does not know
Every claim carries the evidence behind it, and where the evidence is thin the project says so in public rather than quietly rounding up. Conscious Consuming publishes 220 measures it refuses to score. The lab publishes the five predictions its own tests refuted. Earthen Beings publishes how many of its 58 communities have actually been contacted. A private gap costs nothing to ignore; a published one has a price, and that is the point of publishing it.
Refuses the easy measure
Where the number everyone reaches for is measuring the wrong thing, these projects publish a better one and show the working. Rankings are not sorted by who paid. A community map is not sorted by distance, because nearness is not welcome. Model oversight is not scored by whether a model noticed a problem, because noticing and refusing turn out to be different skills.
Composes, and cannot capture
Each project stands on its own and hands its work to the others as plain files anyone can read, copy, or fork. None of them requires another to function, and none can hold another hostage. That is why there are several rather than one: a single platform doing all of it would be a single thing to buy, break, or turn off.
Owns its data
Content lives in plain, portable files (Markdown, HTML, JSON), federable with open datasets. The criteria and standards are versioned and public; they meta-evolve with the community.
Why standards?
Most platforms optimize for attention and extraction. A commons needs the opposite: shared, inspectable rules that protect the people using it. Like ISO standards or a constitution, these are meant to be referenced, adopted, and improved, never owned.
How they evolve
The standards are versioned and public. As projects like Conscious Consuming stabilize their criteria, the most durable ones graduate here, refined through open discussion and democratic process, the same way the projects themselves are meant to grow.