The Man Who Banned The Word “User”

He left a Big Tech analytics firm to build its antithesis. At 32, Christos Floros is taking on Meta and TikTok with Monnett — a human-centred, ad-free social network built in Luxembourg.

At 32, Christos Floros is doing something most founders wouldn’t dare: taking on Meta, TikTok, and the entire surveillance economy — from a standing start in Luxembourg. His platform, Monnett, has 75,000 registered members, €800,000 in seed funding, and a radical premise: that people deserve a social network that works for them, not against them. No algorithm addiction. No ad tracking. No AI-generated noise. Just connection. We sat down with Christos Floros to find out what it really takes to challenge Big Tech from the heart of Europe.

Before Monnett, you worked at Talkwalker — a company specialising in social media data analytics. There’s an almost paradoxical irony there: you spent years helping brands exploit these very platforms before deciding to challenge them. How did that experience shape your critical view of the dominant model?

I learnt a lot at Talkwalker. It was a great company to work for, with an entrepreneurial, start-up spirit. Big Tech social networks exploit user data; what Talkwalker does is provide insight into the raw data, which is what allowed me to understand just how much information we are sharing — and ultimately that the hyper-targeted, ad-based revenue model (often called surveillance advertising) has multiple thorns for the end-user.

You wear several hats at once — architect, political activist, tech entrepreneur. That’s an unusual profile in Luxembourg’s startup ecosystem. How do those three identities actually come together in the day-to-day reality of building Monnett?

Everything I do starts with one question: how can I make a contribution to the people around me, to society around me? I keep asking that question, and it’s taking me to all sorts of interesting, different places.

At 32, you’re taking on Meta, TikTok, and the American Big Tech giants head-on. What was the defining moment — that conviction that you had to do this, that it was no longer just an idea?

There wasn’t a single defining moment. It’s the accumulation of events in the last decade. Brexit, the election of Donald Trump in 2016, Covid-19 misinformation spreads, the rapid polarisation of our societies — you realise that we now exist, and co-exist, through para-social digital spaces. The media were replaced by social media; that’s where perception is shaped. NATO recognised this as cognitive warfare. After running in the European elections and touring the US with the State Department talking to US military personnel, it became obvious: if Europe is to remain independent and sovereign, we need our own tools to communicate.

The name Monnett is itself a manifesto: a play on ‘My Network’ and a nod to Jean Monnet, founding father of Europe. To what extent is that European anchoring a founding value rather than a marketing argument?

Europe has been built on big visions. Some play out well, some don’t. But we’re in a moment when we need big visions. Marketing-wise, it’s not something that, unfortunately, the masses care about.

Your platform offers a chronological feed, user-controlled algorithm settings, and a ‘Distance’ feature that lets people choose the geographic reach of their posts. Concretely, how do those design choices change the experience compared to Instagram or X?

It’s totally different. We are a social network. They are algorithmic entertainment outlets, socially powered. We connect people and enable them to share their lives, their stories, their days, and find new people to meet nearby based on what they share. Big Tech alternatives care about how much time you spend on the platform, and feed you whatever keeps you hooked.

You’ve banned the word ‘user’ internally — people on Monnett are always referred to as people or human beings. It’s a symbolic detail, but a telling one. Where does the line fall between an ethical posture and a genuine break from the dominant model?

We treat people as people — with respect — and want to offer them a trusted platform. I do see myself as an architect when it comes to Monnett. Henri Lefebvre. David Harvey. Bell Hooks. We invite people to share a space and pay for it; we see people as contributors, as customers, not as user-data input to be exploited for profit. The dominant model sees people as potential addicts. How much attention can I extract from 13-year-old kids? How many hours, years of the lives of people can I steal? That’s what the dominant model asks.

You ban AI-generated content. In a world where generative AI is everywhere, how do you intend to enforce that rule technically — and at what cost?

We have an evolving and layered content moderation process. AI is evolving; we don’t have all the answers. We’re setting the right intentions early on.

You raised €800,000 in seed funding from European investors, including senior executives at Microsoft. How do you reconcile the need to raise capital — with all its return-on-investment logic — with a model that explicitly rejects surveillance capitalism?

Indeed, and we’re going back to raise more — if we’re going to make this happen, it will take a lot more. I don’t know why surveillance capitalism became normalised. It shouldn’t be the norm. Whatever happened to paying for a service? And yes, it’s coming back. Customers, not users!

Your revenue model is built on optional subscriptions (Member at €3/month, Member Plus at €6/month), with an ‘ethical’ advertising platform planned for 2027. Is that enough to fund a social infrastructure at scale? What does your path to profitability actually look like?

We have an incredibly robust business model and healthy projections. I’ve been inspired by Spotify in the way they distributed their product and upsold customers. We become profitable if, at scale, more than 10% of our registered accounts become Members. Our goal would be to have at least 40% of registered accounts be Members. But first, we have to survive. I know that every day when I wake up. And when we talk about ethical advertising, we speak about contextual advertising — selling space in a country, a space, not targeted to the end-consumer.

You’re hosting data with Gcore, a Luxembourg-based cloud provider. Data sovereignty is a powerful argument in Europe right now — but is it a sustainable promise given the economic pressures that tend to push companies toward American cloud infrastructure over time?

Gcore has been a phenomenal partner for us. It’s not just a European provider — they are in Luxembourg, down the road from the airport. They act as partners, they check in, they guide us. It makes a world of difference. If we are going to be sovereign — independent — we have to support European businesses. We need our own infrastructure, our own applications, our own ecosystem, and it starts with working with one another.

You chose to build Monnett in Luxembourg rather than in Berlin, Paris, or Amsterdam. Was that a deliberate strategic choice, or did circumstance play a role? What does Luxembourg offer that those cities don’t?

I won’t hide it — I’m Luxembourgish. This is my home, and everything we do in life is a vote. I vote for Luxembourg. But of course, there are also the advantages of the smaller ecosystem: short links, institutional support, we’re at the heart of Europe. If the EU were a country, it would be Luxembourg, not Paris, not Berlin, not Amsterdam. But luckily, we’re close to all these lovely cities — there’s talent and capital there we need to be talking to.

Luxembourg has historically positioned itself as a financial centre. The pivot toward a knowledge and digital economy has been underway for years. From where you sit, how serious is the country’s commitment to becoming a genuine tech hub — beyond the press releases?

The country will continue to do its best. It’s up to us to take up the call and start taking shots. I’m bullish on Luxembourg because we continue to be agile. What I’d love to see is more private capital moving faster, enabled by regulation. Not just government grants.

Digital sovereignty has become one of the defining political debates in Europe. Do you see concrete political will translating into real structural change, or is Europe still largely reactive when it comes to Big Tech?

We’re absolutely reactive. And too slow. And too naive. When we talk about sovereignty, it’s not about painting our allies, partners and competitors as ‘bad’. It’s about ensuring Europe remains independent, able to take decisions of its own, in an interdependent world. Politicians at the moment are simply 10 years behind. I am hoping that entrepreneurship can bridge that delay — with better products and a massive mobilisation of European private capital.

Luxembourg has historically flown under the radar when it comes to tech entrepreneurship. Do you feel a responsibility — almost a symbolic one — to put the country on the map as a place where bold, values-driven startups can emerge and scale?

Absolutely. And as you know, startups fail. I am under no illusion ours might too. But even loud, bold failures can help show there’s a mentality change. The more failures, the more successes we will see. So we need a change of mindset first. Thinking of Talkwalker again — what a massive, great success — it starts with the boldness to go try things.

The European tech scene is often accused of lacking the ‘founder ambition’ of Silicon Valley — thinking too small, too early, too cautiously. Do you recognise that critique, and does it apply to Luxembourg in particular?

The ambition is there. I meet incredible people here. It’s just that we play under a different playbook, in a different environment. We have 75,000 people on our platform, we’ve got hot traction and we’re still raising in a European environment. Equivalent US startups have 100× our funding. I kid you not — we’ve met them. So we’re forced to play by a different playbook. Because European investors operate differently. Most of them, still. But things are changing. And of course there are wonderful exceptions with AI companies — but unfortunately many of them are not actually European entities anymore.

If there’s one thing you wish someone had told you before you started this journey — about Luxembourg, about building a startup, about taking on giants — what would it be?

I don’t know, whatever they’d told me, I wouldn’t have been ready to understand it at the time. But if it helps someone listening to this — be ready to be broken, every day. Be ready to lose your sleep. Be ready to grow, to not recognise yourself month by month. Be ready to meet what you’re made of. It’s scary. You will feel insecure, you will doubt yourself more than ever, often — and yet you will find opportunities to learn from that, grow, not just professionally but personally. As I say this, I wish someone had told me to do this sooner. Yes, that! Go! Go try things! Believe in yourself. Nothing prepares you, there’s no guarantee of success, but it’s a journey of learning, and healing.