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So, what is it?

Another stupid and worthless social media app.

...Then why even make it?

Because I wanted to.

Basically, we built a content advisory system for the internet, but I felt like that wasn't enough. So I wrapped a social media platform around it.

There is a moral hazard to persuasive language, and it often leads us to forget that people are basically good, even when we suck. All this tech is our way of trying to make the web just a little bit nicer. Maybe you'll like the app. Or maybe you won't. I have no idea. But I sure hope you like it.

Okay. So this app is meant to represent how social media is supposed to work?

No.

There is a lot that can be improved with the app, but I do hope it serves as a small step in a positive direction.

Plus design isn't exactly my strong suit, so the UI is a little rough around the edges. And we're only a 3-person team. So ya, it's a positive step forward, but it is NOT a definitive solution to what ails the web right now.

That's cool. What type of features do you have?

Little bit of this. Little bit of that.

We can do words, images, and video. Short-form content. Long-form content (think blog posts). Plus we have a bunch of extra tid-bits that are meant to help make things slightly less toxic for everyone.

Just to give one example, we have two different types of comments you can leave on posts: discussions & responses. Discussion comments are more along the lines of traditional social media (though they are still subject to our content advisory system) whereas response comments cannot contain profanity or any sort of insult. So you can get user engagement while limiting the toxicity via enabling responses and disabling discussion. Or you can leave it wide-open by enabling both responses and discussion. Or you can just turn both off. That's cool too.

Basically, because we are a small team and this is my baby, I can be very opinionated about how the app works. We do not have a recommendation system like you see on other social media apps. Nor do we use push notifications because I loathe receiving them. (If I want to open your app, I will open your damn app; leave me alone, and stop forcing me to adjust a million different app settings just so I can live my life in peace). We also don't enable filters or video editing because I am not interested in that fake nonsense; I want to see how the world really is; I want to see what it is like for you to be you.

And looking at the bigger picture, I think we do a reasonable job of balancing a person's right to free-speech and a person's right to not be subjected to hate-speech, insults, and so forth. Everything is run through our advisory system, and if your post/comment/whatever does get slapped with an advisory, people can still view it, but only after they click through the advisory message. Or in other words, our advisory system requires users consent to viewing potentially problematic content.

This being said, because we are a small team, I may or may not (read: I did) imbue the app with a bit of my personality, so the app can take an existential turn at times. Sorry about that... but there certainly was something cathartic (and perhaps even enlightening) in making the damn thing.

How are advisories generated?

Once again, here is the advisory system. In short, the rhetoric models don't look at WHAT people say, they look at HOW people say it. The rhetoric AI does NOT look at semantics. It does NOT use neural networks. It is indifferent to whether the content is Pro-this or Pro-that. Anti-this or Anti-that. In fact, the entire rhetoric system was built around a phrase I heard from my parents over-and-over while growing up: "It's not what you said, it's how you said it."

However, for things like hate-speech, profanity, etc., the AI does use neural networks and does take semantics into consideration. But the rhetoric models do not.

Anything else I should know?

Probably, but I feel like I have prattled on long enough.

I don't know if anyone is going to use the app, or if people are going to use (or even see value in) the advisory system we built. But you can't beat something with nothing, and at least we tried something. That's all anyone can ever do.