Mission and vision
Healthy communities depend on healthy ecosystems, and digital infrastructure should strengthen both.
Mission
To help people and communities communicate, coordinate, and care for one another through an independent social platform where meaningful participation - and a life beyond the screen - come first.
Vision
A world where people and communities use digital technology to strengthen solidarity, collective agency, and care for all life - thereby paving the way for liberation for all.
Background
The dominant social platforms are built around advertising, surveillance, and maximizing screen time in order to sell more ads. These choices are not neutral: they reward individual visibility and competition at the expense of community and shared responsibility, while fragmenting and capturing our attention. This fundamentally weakens our sense of responsibility toward one another and our solidarity as human beings.
Zen Social was created as a practical alternative - a digital space that helps local communities and membership-based groups coordinate without demanding too much attention or turning their members into products. Our work is grounded in community, respect for privacy, interoperability, and space for life away from the screen.
Our values reflect the principles of the Sustainable Software Manifesto, including data sovereignty, open infrastructure, fair value creation, and governance for the common good.
Our values also reflect the principles behind Nonviolent Global Liberation.
This means that liberation for all is the starting point for our vision. We understand greed and domination as arising from systems built on assumptions of scarcity, separation, and concentrated power, rather than from individual moral failings alone. These systems shape and constrain everyone, including those who benefit from them. This does not change the fact that power and responsibility are unequally distributed, or that the effects of these systems fall more heavily on some people than on others. But no one should be written off in advance as incapable of personal change or of contributing to broader transformation.
Nonviolence therefore does not mean passivity or conflict avoidance. It means pursuing change without denying anyone’s humanity: aligning our means with our ends, limiting harm, insisting on accountability, and remaining open to restoring trust and relationships where capacity allows.
We believe that an alternative platform built on these values can help create better conditions in which communities, relationships, and ecosystems can recover and thrive.
This restorative ambition may inspire product innovation, but Zen Social is not intended to mediate or resolve every conflict or restore every relationship.
The organization may generate revenue, employ people, and operate as a financially sustainable business within a regulated market. But digital infrastructure that communities depend on should not be used to extract value for private owners at the expense of the platform’s purpose and users.
Our commitment to shared stewardship
At present, responsibility for Zen Social rests with Liisberg Consulting ApS, a privately owned company. We have committed to changing that.
Our goal is to establish an independent, purpose-locked ownership structure that safeguards the platform’s purpose and core assets and prevents their value from being extracted for private gain.
The ownership structure must also ensure that the communities using the platform, employees, and representatives of the wider public interest share responsibility for the platform’s development and stewardship.