How safety actually works

The trust ladder

What you can see and do depends on how far up the ladder your account has climbed. Each rung is optional, and each one unlocks something specific.

• Level 0: Looking around. Browse what is happening nearby. Nothing, but locations stay redacted. You can see that something is happening, not where.
• Level 1: A real account. Full visibility. Host, request, and be seen. An account created through any real sign-in: email, Apple, Google or LinkedIn.
• Level 2: Identity checked. Safety features switch on: SOS, trusted contacts, the per-participant safety gate. LinkedIn, phone, and a personal email, all three confirmed.
• Level 3: Workplace checked. The meetups that ask for a confirmed employer. A confirmed work email and company, on top of everything at level 2.

The features

• SOS. One control, reachable from inside a meetup, that reaches your trusted contacts with where you are and who you are with.
• Trusted contacts. People outside the app who you choose in advance. They are who the SOS reaches. They never need an account.
• The safety gate. Contact details are shared on confirmation, per participant, and only between people who have both cleared level 2. Not to a group. Not in advance.
• Quantised coordinates. A viewer never receives a precise position. The location you see is deliberately coarse, computed before it leaves the server.

What a check cannot do

A checked account means a real phone, a real email and a real employer are attached to it. It does not mean we have met this person, and it does not tell you how they will behave. No app can tell you that. What the checks do is make anonymity expensive: if something goes wrong there is a real identity to find, and that is a deterrent rather than a guarantee.

This is why nothing here calls a person verified. A phone number can be verified. An email can be verified. An employer can be verified. A human being cannot, and a badge that implies otherwise encourages people to drop a guard they should keep.

• Meet somewhere public, at least the first time.
• Tell a trusted contact where you are going.
• Leave whenever you want to. You never owe anyone an explanation for going.

Why level 2 gates the safety features

SOS, trusted contacts and the safety gate switch on at level 2, once LinkedIn, phone and personal email are verified. A safety net that an anonymous account can pull is not a safety net, and the people it would reach are real people outside the app.

Location

Below level 1 you cannot see where anything is at all. Above it, coordinates are quantised before they leave the server, so no viewer ever receives a precise position, regardless of their trust level or yours.

Reporting

Report and block are available from any profile and any meetup. Reports are reviewed by a person. TODO before launch: name the response-time commitment you are willing to keep.