This is something different: a science-fictional interview about a data “startup” from a decade in the future.
GriefMax began as a community on reddit, but it lasted there only months before being removed for violating the site’s rules about disclosure of private information. In the early 2020s white supremacists were reluctantly allowed on the major social apps, but the most ambitious doxing project ever conducted was considered beyond the pale.
As often happens with banned communities, GriefMax splintered yet intensified after its ban. Spinoffs began on 8chan, Voat, and various privately-hosted forums, all under the name “GriefMax.” GM, as its members and adherents refer to it, was more of an idea than a cohesive community at that point. The community is still spread across the internet today in 2030, but everyone agrees there is one authoritative GriefMax in the form of the Archive.
I had the chance to interview three core maintainers of the Archive, including one who has been part of GriefMax since the early days. The interviews were conducted over anonymized voice chat with followups over text.
First Interview: Indexer
What is your role with GriefMax?
I build out the interface to the Archive. When customers want to query the Archive, they go to the GM onion site, make their search, and pay for the data. I add new search functionality and facilitate the customer getting the data they want.
What kind of queries can people do on GM? Is there any kind of data you’re particularly proud of providing?
A lot of the data we provide is basic tracking stuff: browser history or email address and social handles. The ad nets got really good at deanonymizing that kind of information early on, and it was easy enough for us to do the same.
What I’m especially proud of is the way we tie data into the real world. For the past few years I’ve spent the most time on our mapping interface. Now that the price of location data has come down so much, we index historical location data at a scale that had only previously been done by Google.
Location history has been GM’s most controversial feature. Customers can see where people have been in the world for years going back. It’s caused countless problems for all kinds of people. Spouses finding out their partners have been cheating on them. Revelations in past crimes. How do you justify exposing this data?
Well, maybe people should just tell the truth.
That’s it? Since 2025 tracking non-anonymized location history has been illegal, yet GriefMax connects location data to individuals and sells it.
We don’t collect the data. We just buy it up for pennies. Suppose we’re the ones deanonymizing it. Do you think we’re the only ones in that business? Go look inside an ad net and tell me they’re not tying your phone’s location data to your real name ad model. All the telcos track it, and they don’t show ads themselves so they have to sell it to someone. Our yearly budget is smaller than any ad net’s. Like everything else GM does, we’re just democratizing what the tech industry is already doing.
Second Interview: Sourcer
For people who haven’t yet been affected by GriefMax, what is it?
GriefMax is democratized veillance. It’s an interface into the comprehensive surveillance ecosystem that the rich and powerful built over the first two decades of the 2000s. They amassed the total data of the planet under a few roofs, to their own ends. GriefMax empowers normal people to turn that machine in a direction of their own choosing.
That sounds noble. But haven’t most of the directions people have pointed GriefMax in led to immiseration? I mean, it’s called “GriefMax” for a reason, isn’t it?
If that’s what people use it for, that’s their choice. It’s not like we built the ICBM, we just gave everyone the launch codes.
You’re a maintainer of the Archive. What does that job entail?
In particular I’m a Sourcer. I find new data dumps and integrate them into the Archive. Usually that means buying them from data brokers, the same data brokers that sell to ad nets. I have the keys to add data to the Archive, and I have the keys to spend GM’s budget allocation.
So data brokers don’t mind selling to GriefMax? Where are they getting this data?
If anything it’s good for their reputations. The more private and perspicacious their data is, the more valuable it is to GM or the ad nets alike. We don’t ask where they get it. The ad auction houses are buying exactly the same stuff we are, go ask them. [ed: It's widely held that GM buys data from hackers and illicit data dumps.]
Does it bother you that a lot of the data in GriefMax comes from security breaches?
Listen, these security breaches aren’t exactly rocket science. Data warehouses leave the front door open, “hackers” walk in and take the data, then they sell the data to the ad nets. The ad nets target you, you buy stuff, and more data gets put in the data warehouses. If you zoom out, the same handful of institutionals own the data warehouses and the ad nets anyway. Hackers provide the valuable service of ferrying data across the firewall between the warehouse and the ad nets. They’re part of the ecosystem, and everyone is happy with it.
Third Interview: Admin
You’ve been part of GriefMax since its founding. What motivated you to get the project off the ground?
Really it was naivety. I got a glimpse into the operations of the surveillance machine venture capital had built, and I wanted to expose it. I assumed that once it was made visible, the masses wouldn’t stand for the machine continuing to operate. A few years after GM took off, it became clear to me that visibility wasn’t enough, and nothing had really changed. A few laws got passed, but the capital machine adapted: data dead drops, mock dumps, and pseudo-anonymization techniques insulated the industry from oversight, not to mention the close relationship between tech and the state.
Now we’ve built a sustainable operation. We have at least as much data as any major ad net, but we don’t use it to show ads. We don’t even sell bulk data; as you try to buy more pieces of data, the price goes up exponentially. We’re trying to sell data to individuals, not institutions.
Is what GriefMax does legal? Have you ever received threats from government authorities?
Are the hypertargeted ads that follow you around the subway legal? We’re not doing a single thing different from them. Mysteriously they don’t draw the attention of the authorities. My guess is they have an understanding with authorities, if you know what I mean. We don’t hand data to governments; if they want it they can buy it a piece at a time like everyone else.
GriefMax is built on a decentralized architecture. We’re a TOR onion site and we take payment in cryptocurrency. The Archive is publicly available as an encrypted torrent. The Index server is open source. Every piece of the network is open and replicable. All that’s missing is a set of private keys maintained by us administrators. It’s not clear that GM could be threatened.
There’s a rumor that the GM admins have a dead man’s switch set to release the keys to the archive. Is that true?
No comment.
Thanks for reading something more experimental. I’ll probably be back at analysis next week.