Sayches’ Fish, Overconfidence or Real Ability?

A small timeline puzzle for you. What’s the common theme around these months: September 2006, December 2007, November 2011, June 2013, July 2014, April 2015, February 2018, and March 2018? Well, these are the months when Facebook, the social media giant, was either alleged to have been involved in some kind of data privacy incident or accepted that there has been a data breach on their end.

FTC Chairman Joe Simons in a 2019 ruling asked Facebook to pay $5 bn to settle privacy concerns and said “Despite repeated promises to its billions of users worldwide that they could control how their personal information is shared, Facebook undermined consumers’ choices,”.

Similar to Facebook, other social media giants including Twitter have had their own privacy issues. 

As a user of these social media platforms, you should be worried about the fact that every action that you make on social media can be used to alter how you make decisions including your buying preferences, and, in some cases, to harass you.

But it’s not that people don’t react to data privacy issues. Recently, a data privacy update from WhatsApp saw a massive reaction in the form of people downloading a similar platform Signal which claims to have better data protection features. Similarly, ProtonMail saw a massive surge in its usage owing to concerns around Gmail.

In the realm of social media, Sayches, a British Startup aims to address these data privacy concerns. But given the clout and money the big names like Facebook and Twitter have, is Sayches claim overconfidence or real ability?

The question on ability though premature to ask is well-founded because even the giant of giants Google failed miserably at providing Google+ as a social media alternative.

However, the confidence part comes into play because the start-up invests heavily in developing new products and services with the fundamental principle to uphold human rights to privacy, anonymity, and transparency without any compromises. 

The intention and the work behind the products can be gauged from Sayches first promotional advertisement. They came up with a mascot which is a hybrid of an elephant and a fish. The promotional video also portrays Facebook as a shark and Twitter as jellyfish.

According to the company’s official statement, “it’s easy to catch a fish but it’s really difficult to catch an elephant. So, we created a hybrid animal by giving the strength of the elephant to the weaker organism. This way, Sayches will be able to fight threats that it aspires to nullify”. The mascot has been designed to symbolize the digital privacy offered by the company’s services.

Addressing questions around the actual talent and resources Sayches has to address data privacy issues, the company’s official spokesperson said that they are on a mission to disrupt the way data is being used or misused by social media giants. The aim of the company is to provide an environment where people can connect without being worried about the misuse of their data and Sayches will do whatever it takes to achieve this goal.

The ultimate question remains whether Sayches will live up to its expectations or will disappear like other Startups that dared to challenge social media giants.