A founder's note

Years ago, a letter arrived telling me I owed the government thousands of dollars.

I didn't owe it. An algorithm had decided I did, averaging numbers in a way that turned out to be unlawful, as a Royal Commission would later confirm for hundreds of thousands of Australians who got the same letter. But on the day it arrived, none of that was known. There was just a machine's decision, a number, and a demand.

What I remember most isn't the money. It's the helplessness. There was no one to reason with. There was no evidence I could inspect. The system that accused me didn't have to show its work. I had to disprove it, with payslips from years earlier that ordinary people don't keep. The machine made the claim, and the burden of proof landed on me.

I never forgot what that felt like.

Dynamic Feed is my answer to that letter.

We build data with receipts. Every reading we serve is signed at the moment of measurement, independently time-stamped, and archived so that any alteration or backdating shows up. Anyone can verify a record for themselves: a farmer, a builder, an insurer, a regulator, a court, a person holding a letter they don't understand. Without trusting us, and without asking permission.

We call ourselves a neutral witness, and we mean it precisely. We are not an oracle that declares truth. We are a courier that proves exactly what was said, by which source, at which moment. Our records work against us just as well as they work for us. Tamper-evident, not tamper-proof. Advisory evidence, not certification. We are never in the money path, and we never make the decision. We just make sure the decision can be checked.

Machines are making more decisions every year. About payouts and penalties, about when to spray and when to lift, about what people owe. Most of those decisions will be right. Some won't be. The difference between a fair system and a Robodebt is whether the person on the receiving end can see what the machine knew and check it independently.

That should never again depend on who holds the power.

I'm building this as a solo founder and a global citizen, for my family. One day my two sons will read this and know what their father chose to do with a letter that once made him feel powerless: he built the thing that didn't exist when the machine came for him.

Sami Mechkor

Founder, Dynamic Feed · the seven principles · about