I built an alternative to popular social networks because I was sick of the unending enshittification of instagram. Every UX change in recent years intended to make their app more addictive to teenagers has made me want to use it less, but I don't want to lose contact with the actual people that are close to me. First it was stories to make it your job to open the app every day, and then "everything is a reel" to try to get you to scroll infinitely.

This app is a more minimalist way to share photos and short videos with people you actually know. There are no public profiles so no follows, only mutuals. The feed is in reverse chronological order and there are no suggested posts or suggested connections. When sharing, you can choose the audience (you can create groups or select individual people), it's not necessarily to all your mutuals.

Other UX niceties I added are the fact that you can only see comments on your friends' posts from people you know (so no more terrible takes from their random uncle you've never met). There is also the concept of albums where the audience is the album members, who are not necessarily connected to each other, which can be useful for events or group trips.

Beyond the worsening UX of other apps, I know a lot of people who have left social media, either by deleting their account or by just never interacting, because they don't trust big tech companies with their media. E.g. people who don't share photos of their family on facebook even to only their friends. The end-to-end encryption part of the app is there for those people as well. What you share is encrypted with post-quantum keys and only the people you share a post with have the keys to decrypt it on their phone. Someone with access to the database cannot see media, captions, comments, display names, profile photos, and album and group names.

The app will never show ads since I believe that that's what drives a lot of the UX decisions on the other platforms.

It's available on both android and ios currently in Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, USA, and Canada, because those had a relatively low barrier to entry, but if there is interest I will add other countries eventually. In particular, EU countries require a legal representative there that it doesn't make sense for me to pay for right now.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50331387

Points: 1

# Comments: 0