Hey folks,

I'm trying to build a company that will offer an alternative to the ad-based social media giants. The joy of the web is dying as the Internet becomes unusable due of ads/tracking, and there's a tit-for-tat war between businesses and users (who are often the product).

I was hoping to gather some feedback from the community at large in order to make sure we're doing the right things. I won't name the company, but it's easy to figure out if you're curious.

There's a real benefit to online communities and the value they provide, but there's a harmful trend toward sacrificing individual rights for profits.

I'd love some feedback on:

1. What privacy features do you want to see in cloud-esque products (think Google's product suite, except with real privacy)?

2. Are you outright opposed to paying for products? (A stupid question, but I want to hear people's answers.)

3. What are the sort of things that make you say "absolutely not!". Ex: we currently ask for a phone number to verify accounts. We don't want a platform full of bots/spammers/etc like Twitter (it suck for everyone, but inflates the numbers). We're finding a lot of resistance to us collecting phone numbers, even though the alternatives (like using a 3rd party, or recaptcha) are arguably worse.

4. What's your biggest complaint about existing cloud services (like Gmail, docs, file sharing, messaging, etc)?

5. Are you more likely to sign up if all the information is laid out in a landing page? Or do you think you're more likely to sign up if we use "growth hacks" like getting you to enter your email and then spamming you forever? (We don't do this btw, but I have a feeling it works well because it's everywhere.)

6. Are you feeling spam/ad fatigue? on a 1 to 10 scale, how fatigued do you feel (1 being not at all, 10 being extremely depressed about spam/ads/marketing/BS).

PS: I posted this on /r/privacy too, if you want to see what people are saying over there.