New, healthier internet:

Lokkal is local internet: social network, search engine, calendar of events... Lokkal is the digital town square, like the Yellow Pages robustly reborn for the 21st century.

Lokkal is a new kind of website, a new kind of internet, internet as a public service. Like public television is different from commercial television, Lokkal is different from commercial internet.

The more people use social media (Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok...) the more they are at risk for psychological disease. To maximize share-holders' profits, today's commercial social media must do everything it can to engage their users, to keep their users on their platform. The more time the user spends on their platform, the more profit there is for their shareholders. Engagement becomes addiction. The more addicted users are, the more profit there is for their shareholders.

We need a new online model, a new social media ecosystem, free of commercial pressure. Operated as a public utility. Lokkal is a healthy online alternative.

Strong local economy:

Uploading their content, Facebook's users build Facebook, adding fresh posts to the platform. Mark Zuckerberg benefits from the platform that we build. The better model is where the user benefits from the engagement that their content generates. If you are uploading content that people want to see, then Lokkal will pay you to continue. The community will share in the revenue generated by the platform they build.

Buying local keeps money circulating in the community, enriching each hand it passes through. Large corporate chains extract profits from the local community, impoverishing the community. Lokkal "returns" profits to the community in terms of grants and investments (microfinance).

Jaron Lanier, the "Father of Virtual Reality," says that when you push everything through one filter you get a z-curve, a steep, peaked curve. Mark Zuckerberg, in terms of revenue from Facebook and Instagram, is at the top of that peak. And there is very little room for anyone else up there. We see this single filter phenomenon with online music sales, where 5% of the musicians make 95% of the sales.

With multiple filters, the z-curve's pinnacle becomes a broad, lower summit, with room for a lot of people. This more equitable distribution of income allows many more people to pursue what interests them. They now make money from what before was a dream, or, at best, a hobby. This culturally enriches those people and society in general.

If you are interested in shoes, jazz, animals, toddlers, art, ice cream, bicycling or whatever, Lokkal will pay you to curate that interest on Lokkal. Lokkal organizes a local Amazon.com so that customers who prefer to buy both online and local can do so.

Building community:

Along with a strong local economy, better community is the answer to many of the pressing problems facing society today. Solutions come from the grassroots, not from the top down. Lokkal provides a practical, positive way to better your community. It is a platform for constructive social activism. Organizing locally is the antidote to the flattening effects of globalism. Unite.

Lokkal puts crowdsourcing to work. When a lot of people each guess the number of jellybeans in a jar or the weight of an ox, then the most frequent guess is the closest to the right answer.

Lokkal is humanly curated internet. Local moderation fosters civility.

Lokkal makes it easy for local businesses to communicate with their clients and potential clients. Global social platforms do not work well for local businesses.

Truly user-friendly social media:

Lokkal invites you to filter the content that you are shown. See what you want to see, instead of an endless stream of mostly irrelevant posts, served up by the algorithm. Lokkal efficiently delivers the content that is important to you. Lokkal is entertaining, but it is also a tool.

In physics, the simpler a formula is, the more likely it is to be true: E=mc². Lokkal is simple.

"[Big tech's] business model and their algorithms are destroying humanity." - Jaron Lanier

Lokkal is:
• a digital town square
• a robust, interactive city directory
• like the old Yellow Pages reborn for the 21st century
• a local social network and search engine where you can:

- Find businesses, people, places, events, products...
- Create content: Profiles, Pages, Events...
- Advertise for free

Lokkal is:
a social network like Facebook and
it is a search engine like Google,
but Lokkal is local, geographically-specific, just for San Miguel.

Connecting the community, Lokkal is:
• our local internet platform
• a digital mall
• the one place to go for everything San Miguel

There is local TV and local radio.
There are local newspapers.
Now there is local internet.
Now we have Lokkal.

Search is work.
People don't want to search.
They want to find.
Lokkal is find, not search.

On Lokkal you can find local:
•businesses
•events
•people
•places of interest
•products
•services
•workshops
•performances
•rentals
•clubs
•classes
•movie schedules
•nightlife
•more

Like Facebook, Lokkal is a social network where you can make a profile, pages, posts, events and comment on posts.
But Lokkal is geographically-specific.
Each city, starting here in San Miguel, has its own Lokkal platform.

Like Google, Lokkal is a search engine.
But Lokkal's innovative search technology makes it easy to find what interests you without sorting through a mountain of irrelevant results.

Choose hashtags (key words) for your content and when users search for those #tags they find your profile, page, post, event listing...

Reaching out:
Lokkal makes it easy for local businesses to communicate with their clients and potential clients, easy to socially network locally.

Reaching in:
Lokkal makes local search easy.

(These functions, local social networking and local search, are very difficult on global platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Google...)

On Lokkal it is easy to find what interests you and to reach everyone who is interested in you:

- if your restaurant cares enough about gorditas to choose the hashtag #gorditas, then users who care about gorditas can find your restaurant

- if you want to meet someone who has an interest in wine and jazz guitar, you can search profiles for people who have used the hashtags #wine and #jazzguitar

- if you are visiting a new city and want to play a game of chess, you can search profiles, pages, posts and events for the hashtag #chess

- if you want to attend a concert, you can search the event calendar for #livemusic or #concert or #blues or...

On Lokkal's Wall you can view all posts in the city
and see everything that is going on in town
or filter posts to see only those:

• with photos
• made on Profiles (by individuals)
• made on Pages (by businesses, etc.)
• with the most likes
• made by your Friends
• with #tags that interest you
• etc.

When you want your friends and family to know, use Facebook.
When you want the whole community to know, use Lokkal.

Use Lokkal without registering
or register
to create your own content,
to comment on posts
to message other users.

Please watch the 2.5-minute video below to see the platform in action.

Lokkal is:

• a geographically-specific internet platform that builds community and fosters empathy

• a digital town square that strengthens the local economy, combats income inequality, resists the concentration of wealth and provides Covid relief for small businesses

• a transparent, more ethical, more humane, less addictive, less toxic internet experience

• a meta-platform that gets to the root of many problems facing society today

• a counterweight to the forces of globalism

• the People's Internet, a grassroots, cooperative, crowd-sourced project, free of commercial control, managed like a public utility for the community's benefit

• a new type of website, a new way of using the internet, community supported internet

A local economic platform, Lokkal:
• keeps money flowing locally
• enriches the community
• provides Covid relief for small businesses

Lokkal is:
• part of the movement towards a more ethical, more humane internet
• a non-addictive, non-toxic internet platform
• an interface between the digital and the actual community
• realizing the great hopes of the internet as a force of positive social change

Lokkal is a new kind of website, a new kind of internet;
the internet as a public service.

Like public television is different than commercial television,
Lokkal is different than commercial internet.

By promoting community wealth, communication and interaction,
Lokkal provides a platform for
positive, constructive, practical social activism.

Thank you, Big Tech, but we don't need your algorithms;
we will present our own community to the world.

Lokkal is "Buy Local" online.

Why are we letting global companies (Air BNB, Uber...) come to our city and extract wealth?

We can make our own rental or ride service and keep the money spent flowing in our city.

Lokkal organizes a local Amazon.com so that customers who prefer to buy both online and local can do so.

Lokkal provides technology to small businesses,
leveling the technological playing field,
allowing small players to compete against the "big boys".

Lokkal makes it easy for local businesses to communicate with their clients and potential clients.

Raising living standards boosts the overall well-being of societies, reducing many social ills.

Free of poverty, people become better educated and they take better care of the natural environment.

Free of the struggle for the basic necessities, people are able to focus on their higher needs.

Local people helping local people benefits everyone in the community, society as a whole.

Stronger community is the answer to many of society's challenges:
• improving health
• extending life
• promoting well-being
• fostering empathy
• bettering quality of life
• increasing income...

Community fosters:
• belonging
• place
• identity
• purpose
• meaning
• happiness

Healthier communities create healthier individuals,
in a positive feedback loop,
because healthier individuals in turn create healthier communities.

"[Google's] business model and their algorithms are destroying humanity." - Jaron Lanier, inventor of Virtual Reality

Lokkal is humanly curated internet

As opposed to the Facebook model, where Mark Zuckerberg profits from the platform that users build, on Lokkal the community will share the profits of the platform they build.

Entertaining and fun, Lokkal is yet a tool to put you in touch with your real life neighbors.

Online social networks substitute poorly for face to face interactions. Digital likes and notifications are pale imitations of real world affirmations.

The interface between the digital and the actual community, Lokkal encourages socializing in the material world. Find out what is going on and then go do it. Create community.

Life is more than what the algorithm displays. Artificial intelligence must serve, not master, humanity.

Lokkal is the People's Internet. Take back the web.

Lokkal is not just a new website.
Lokkal is a new internet experience.

Everyone is shouting, "Global! Global!"
Lokkal shouts, "Local!"

Lokkal is a huge innovation,
a Blue Ocean Strategy that opens up an undiscovered market:

•Cirque du Soleil combines features of circus and theater
•NetJets allows corporations to share jets
•Paypal invented the online payment platform
•Lokkal organizes the internet in service of the local community.

Social networking, getting noticed online, is now very difficult. It is a complicated, time-consuming art and science. To do it you need to invest many hours or many dollars... and keep investing them.

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that social networking on global platforms (Facebook, Instagram...) is impossible for local businesses. It is extremely difficult to target your posts so that they reach a local audience.

Lokkal make local social networking easy. All your posts stay local. If you post in San Miguel, your post stays in San Miguel and users interested in San Miguel can find it.

Now, with Lokkal the local entity (dentist, bakery, NGO, club, individual...) can reach their local market.

Lokkal is a metaplatform, a platform of platforms. The city united.

We are fortunate to have many non-profit organizations here in San Miguel working in their particular ways to make our city better, to help people here. Lokkal unites these NGOs on a single publicity platform, making it easier to inform the public of their important work.

Lokkal has started in San Miguel, but already has the technology to replicate in other towns and cities.

Lokkal donates or invests its profits in the local community.

People love being online, but what is there to do?

Facebook is good for keeping up with friends and family.
Instagram is a picture book.
Tik Tok is a tide of very short videos.

Lokkal is a positive, constructive, practical, non-governmental, grassroot force for change, helping to create a richer, more articulated, more vibrant community.

Lokkal puts crowd-sourcing to work.

When a lot of people each guess the number of jellybeans in a jar or the weight of an ox the average of all their guesses is the closest estimate of the right answer. Collectively we are smarter than the smartest of us.

Lokkal channels the energy of the community in a supportive, expanding structure. Lokkal's evolving platform allows the force of community to organize, develop and grow organically.

There is great power in the collective. Sharing resources, together we can.

Lokkal relies on local representatives to update and monitor content. There is no substitute for the local curation of content. If you are interested in helping, please email us:

If you want to make the world a better place, start with yourself. Then look towards improving your community.

Lokkal provides a practical, positive way to better your community. It is a platform for constructive social activism.

The Magic of Buying Local:

A man comes into town, enters a hotel, puts a $100 bill down on the counter to rent a room. Then, deciding to view the room first and leaving the $100 on the counter, he takes the key and walks upstairs. From behind the counter, the hotel owner grabs the $100 and runs next door to the restaurant where he uses the money to pay his account. The restaurant owner, money in hand, delivers it to the table where is sitting the contractor who is building him an addition. The contractor pushes the bill across the table to his girlfriend to whom he is in debt. She rises quickly and runs next door putting the $100 bill on the hotel counter to pay her old account there, doing so just as the potential hotel customer is making his way back down the stairs.

Many sober and intelligent people imagine us transitioning to a utopian future. Technology is leading us to a place where education is free and machines do most all of the work.

We are moving from a zero sum paradigm (if you win, I lose) to a paradigm of abundance (if you win, I win).

This utopian future depends on healthier communities and requires a healthier internet. Lokkal strengthens communities online and off.

"...true security is to be found in social solidarity..."
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, 'How strong I am now and how secure,' and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light."
The Brothers Karamazov, Book 6, Chapter 2

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