Leaving Should Be Easy
Here's a test for any social network: try to leave.
Not deactivate. Not "take a break." Leave, and take your stuff with you. Your posts, your photos, the comments your sister left in 2019. On most big platforms that's a maze: a settings page three menus deep, an archive that shows up days later in a format nothing else can read, and a "delete" button that turns out to mean "hide."
That's not an accident. When your business is attention, every person who walks out is lost inventory. So the exit gets designed like a casino's: you can find it, technically, if you really try.
We're building the opposite, and we want to say so on the record before the code is done. If it's in writing, we're on the hook.
Why the exit matters more than the entrance
A small network only works if people are there because they want to be. If you stay only because leaving is hard, you aren't a member. You're stuck. You can feel it in how people post: carefully, defensively, like someone who knows they can't take it back.
An easy exit changes how people stay. If you know you can pack up and go any time, with everything, you relax. You write the post for your six people instead of for your future enemies. Trust is cheaper to build when people aren't trapped.
There's also a legal floor here, and it's worth knowing about even if you never read a regulation. In Europe, the GDPR gives people a right to data portability, meaning you can get your data in a structured, machine-readable format, and a right to erasure, the "right to be forgotten." There's also a nonprofit, the Data Transfer Initiative, working on moving data directly between services. We think those are the minimum, not something to aim for.
What we're committing to
These are design commitments for the rebuild. Some exist, some are half-wired, and we'll say which is which as they land:
- Export is one button. Everything you made comes out in one archive: your posts, your photos at full resolution, your room memberships. You get it in open formats (plain text, JSON, the original image files) that you can open without us.
- Export includes context. A post without its room is half a post, so the archive keeps which room something was in and when. Other people's replies stay theirs, though. Your export holds your words, not your friends'.
- Delete means delete. When you delete your account, your content is removed, not hidden behind a flag in a database we still keep. If a short waiting period exists, it's there so you can change your mind, it's stated plainly, and it's short.
- No guilt screens. No "your friends will miss you," no sad mascot, no five-step confirmation designed to wear you down. One clear warning, one confirmation, done.
- Rooms survive you leaving. If you leave, the room your family uses doesn't disappear with you. Your posts go and the conversation keeps going.
What's genuinely unsolved
Being honest about the bench, as always:
- Backups. A deleted post can live on in a backup until that backup expires. We'll tell you exactly how long that window is instead of pretending it doesn't exist. We haven't settled the number yet.
- Shared things. A photo you posted that six people commented on: when you delete it, what happens to their comments? Our current answer is that the comments go with the post. They were replies to something that's gone. We're not sure that's right, and we want to hear arguments.
- Moving to another service. Exporting a file is easy. Importing it somewhere useful depends on other services caring. Open formats are the best we can do from our side.
The point
We'd rather earn the next visit than trap you into it. A site that's easy to leave has to be worth coming back to, and that's the only kind of site worth building.
More from the workbench when export is lit.