By Zoe Kalar •
February 22, 2025
Let’s talk about money.
I know, it’s a taboo topic. But how money flows and who gets to keep it is central to the mission of WeAre8.
Fundamentally, we’re in the business of creative and economic liberation. Our goal is to shift the money that’s going to a few big tech companies and share it with the millions of people who are generating all the value.
Growing up in a working-class suburb, I remember my mum always being conscious of the items going through the checkout at the supermarket. Even as a little girl who could barely see over the checkout counter at Woolies, I could sense my mom’s tense energy. I could feel it. Was there going to be enough?
Experiences like that stick with you, and even to this day, I often think about what it means to have enough and how we can close the massive divide between the 1% and the 99%.
I remember reading an excerpt from a Time Magazine article in 2008 by the U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs. He made the case that we could end extreme poverty by 2025 (this year!) if rich people just redirected 1% of their income.
It sounded so simple, but as I read it, heavily pregnant with my twins, I knew it wouldn’t work. I even wrote him a letter at the time sharing my ideas on how we could address it by uniting people with new economic models.
The extreme rich would never agree to Sach’s plan. I knew that they would never understand the idea that shared economic models can exist in ways that benefit everyone.
Wealth inequality is most pronounced in big tech. Despite all the claims of technology that makes lives better, all the money keeps pounding into the bank accounts of a few big companies and a few absurdly wealthy individuals.
We, the people, have become the largest unpaid workforce in human history. We share our lives, we post videos, we write heartfelt content, and they hoover it all up to make billions selling ads to us. They control what we see, how we feel, and how money flows.
This isn’t just wrong, it’s unsustainable. And it's not going to last. One day our kids will look back on this moment and be stunned that we put up with it for so long.
About a year after I wrote that letter to Sachs, I built a data company that gave me an inside look into where the 300 billion dollars of ad spend went. Over the 10 years that followed, I saw the revenue of publishing, local news, and journalism implode while the big tech companies like Meta made hundreds of billions of dollars. To make more money by serving us more ads, Big Tech needs to keep us scrolling, no matter what the cost to our mental health.
We have a goal at WeAre8 to get a dollar into your 8wallet every day.
How? For every brand that advertises on 8, 50% of their ad spend goes directly to people on the platform who watch their ads. I think of this as a true Common Wealth or People’s Wealth where people are recognized and paid for the value they create.
You might be thinking: a dollar a day isn’t much. But the truth is it can add up. A report in 2019 found that almost 40% of Americans would struggle to cover an unexpected $400 expense, which is about a dollar a day.
Collectively it is massive: 5,000 people in one community watching 2 minutes of ads every day for a year adds up to $730,000. Imagine if that was directed towards a school or a community project!
To me, it’s more than just dollars and cents in a digital wallet. Getting compensated for our time and our data speaks to our value. It speaks to our self-respect, it speaks to our worth, it speaks to the power within each of us.
Before we know it, the power in the major brands will recognize the power in us, the people. And when this happens, when this really happens, radical change isn’t just possible, it’s inevitable. When the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars gets redirected back to the people, everything is possible.
Brands are beginning to notice. So far, 250 of the largest global brands have moved ad spend to WeAre8. And they’re seeing results: when a brand shifts its ad spend to WeAre8, they get on average 50x more attention than an ad on Meta.
More can be done, and we need your help. We can accelerate this transition by standing together and calling on brands to shift their ad spend to the people on WeAre8.
You can help by reaching out to brands you love on social or their websites and tell them to value you and advertise to you on WeAre8. Just pick one brand and make a comment on their social posts.
When done together, the smallest steps can compound into a tidal wave. We’re at the dawn of an economic liberation for the people that’s about to become unstoppable.
Here’s to a world of true creative and economic freedom,
Zoe
8 Profiles I am loving:
This week I wanted to celebrate some of the extraordinary artists and photographers that are building their social homes on WeAre8. Get behind them and show them some love!
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