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Comment by erikfiala | Hacker News Reader

Hello hackers! Everchat is finally here!

During the past year, we were working hard on making Everchat happen. Today, we're proud to present you with the first public version of it!

We're looking forward to seeing what channels you'll create, what topics you'll talk about, and what we can improve and build to make Everchat better for you.

Features in this launch:

  - Account creation
  - Your and others' profiles
  - Create a public channel
  - Create a thread
  - Reply
  - Upvote and downvote
  - @mention, #hashtag, !channel
  - Earn karma
  - Channel members overview
  - Share (copy link)
  - Search (channels and people)
  - Email notifications

If you have any feature requests, just reach out to us via the https://everch.at/feature-requests channel.

If you want to leave any other feedback, let us know here in the comment section below, contact us via email or Twitter, or the best way is to tell us in the https://everch.at/feedback channel.

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From the About page (https://everch.at/about):

> "We promise never to give any of your private or personally identifiable information to 3rd parties."

>"Everchat is censorless, but we reserve rights to take down any subject to criminal activity."

How will you reconcile privacy with the "Basic human right of Internet freedom" and takedown requests from authoritarian governments against dissidents who break local speech laws?

How will you handle NSFW posts?

According to the Terms & Conditions (https://everch.at/legal), Everchat JSA is governed by the laws of Slovakia, but I am not familiar with Slovakian free speech laws and liability for platforms.

> "How will you reconcile privacy with the "Basic human right of Internet freedom" and takedown requests from authoritarian governments against dissidents who break local speech laws?"

Hopefully we can decentralize the platform in the way that we will be able to back-track history (once we open-source on GitHub).

> "How will you handle NSFW posts?"

Just like on Reddit, there will be a Settings toggle to show/hide them.

Why create a new app instead of simply running a matrix.org server instance?

Hi Erik,

The app looks clean and useful. It's a no-bullshit approach to a digital free speech space. Could be useful for example in my country of choice: I live in Thailand and we have a democracy movement that faces real threats form the monarchy and government.

I read your legal docs. They are pretty clear from what I understand. What's not so clear to me are 3 things:

1. How does everchat protect me? I am in Thailand and breaking local laws like talking about the Monarchy can land me in Jail or void my Visa and Work permit.

2. I thought an Impressum is mandatory in GDPR, it looks a bit shady to me, having an app and not seeing an Impressum with a real address and company name.

3. What's everchat's buisness model, and how are you gonna make money? (If part of this includes using my personal data, I am fine with it, as long as I exactly understand how you gonna use it.)

The three main pitch headlines under "About":

> Basic human right: We at Everchat believe that Internet freedom is one of our and our users’ fundamental human rights.

> Data anonymity: We promise never to give any of your private or personally identifiable information to 3rd parties.

> No censorship: Everchat is censorless, but we reserve rights to take down any subject to criminal activity.

Given the values you communicate, what (apart from pinky promises) do you do differently to assure users that these are fulfilled? How do you avoid making yourselves a SPoF?

Is the protocol open? Can I self-host? Will sources be made available and if so under what license?

Is this something like a reddit clone?

For now yes, but we want to take a different path later on. :)

Such as? I would like to hear about this! (Do you have it written in a blog post somewhere?)

we don't sorry - it's a lot to work on since we're just two guys working on this project :D

you can check out our PH post's last image, there are couple of things we're planning in the future https://www.producthunt.com/posts/everchat-1-0

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