Remember when sharing was just sharing?

The feed is not a slot machine of endless content

Feeds on other sites never end, and that's on purpose. Your home page shows the latest posts from the people you've favorited or approved, newest first, and when you hit the bottom, that's it. There is a link to older posts if you feel like digging.

Nothing is ranked or recommended. If nobody you know has posted lately, then there is nothing new. It means you are caught up. Get on with your life.

No popularity contest

Posts here don't keep score. There are no likes, view counts, or share numbers, so there's nothing to chase and nothing to perform for. You're just writing for the people who'll read it.

How favorites work

Favorites are for the people you never want to miss, and you get ten of them. Go to someone's profile and hit the favorite button (hit it again if you change your mind). Their posts show up in your home feed, and you can address a post to your favorites only. The list is not ranked, and nobody gets notified when they are added or dropped.

How approving and disapproving work

Approving and disapproving covers everyone else. When you approve someone, their posts join your home feed, and they can see anything you share with people you approved. When you disapprove someone, posts you send to "everyone except people I disapprove" skip them. Both are just buttons on a profile. Click one to set it, click it again to take it back, or click the other one if you change your mind.

You can approve up to fifty people and disapprove up to fifty people this way. This sounds low until you try to name a hundred people you actually know. Profiles do show how many approvals and disapprovals someone has collected. So when you are looking at a person's profile or your own, you can see how many approvals and disapprovals there are.

Who can see what

First things first: you have to be signed in to see anything at all. No post, profile, or picture on socialstuffs is visible to the open internet. Once you're in, every post has an audience that you pick when you write it:

• Drafts: nobody but you, until you publish.
• Everyone: every signed-in member. This is as public as socialstuffs gets.
• My favorites: just the people on your favorites list.
• People I approve: only the members you've approved.
• Everyone except people I disapprove: exactly what it says.

Your own feed works the same way. It only ever contains you and the people you picked, and nobody can pay us to show up in it.

A post is words, one picture, one link

That's the whole format. It's enough to tell a story, show off a photo, or pass along something worth reading. If you have more pictures than that, well, put them somewhere else and include a link.

Where we use AI

We use AI for one thing. Every picture and every bit of text gets checked when it's posted, to catch rude, lewd, or mean stuff before anyone has to see it. No filter catches everything, but we try hard to keep this place safe and friendly.

That's the AI's ONLY job here. It doesn't rank your feed, pick what you see, or study what you click.

Meeting new people

The Discover page is the only discovery feature we have. It shows the latest posts members have shared with everyone, so you can find people worth favoriting or approving. We don't scrape your contacts or guess at "people you may know." And you have to be signed in to see it.

Getting in

socialstuffs is invite-only while we grow. Every member gets a handful of invite codes to hand out, so most people arrive because someone they know wanted them here. Whoever invites you starts out as one of your favorites, so your feed is never empty on day one.

Don't know anyone on the inside? Join the waitlist and we'll email you an invite code as we're ready for new people. Already holding a code? Head straight to sign up.

Keeping it simple and safe

socialstuffs is plain old web pages. They load fast, work in any browser, and don't ask you to install an app or hand over your phone number. The simplicity is also what keeps it safe. Small circles, posts with picked audiences, a front door that requires signing in, and screening on everything that gets uploaded. There just isn't much machinery here that can be turned against you.

Your stuff is yours

You can download everything you've ever posted (profile, posts, pictures) as a single zip, any day you like (up to once a day). And if you decide to leave, deleting your account really deletes it. Posts, pictures, connections, all of it, wiped from our database and our storage. We don't keep a copy for our records, because they aren't our records.