Live now felt empty unless people typed their details in, so it now shows everyone who is here as an unnamed dot at their nearest city of 100,000 people or more, or just their country. Our network provider works that out from your connection; I never store or show your IP address, and your dot disappears when you leave. Your name still only appears if you choose to add it.
There is now a small privacy banner the first time you visit, and a privacy page that explains everything in plain words. You can turn location sharing off with one tap. I also want to understand how people use Together so I can make it better, so if you accept analytics, the site uses Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity. They only start after you say yes, their advertising features are switched off, and they will never be used to decide who you meet.
You can now choose to appear on Live now with a first name or nickname and the place you are visiting from. You will see a small constellation of everyone else who has chosen to appear, and you can wave to another place or compare it with your own: what time it is there, how long their day is, what season they are in, roughly how far apart you are, and the moon you share tonight.
I have kept it deliberately careful:
nobody appears unless they choose to, and you disappear within a minute of closing the page;
you can only pick a city of 100,000 people or more, or just your country, and your IP address is never stored or shown (at most, your country is suggested);
names can only contain letters, so nobody can post a phone number or a link;
waves are wordless and anonymous, and there is no chat yet; and
it is for adults only while Together is being built.
Next, I want people who wave to each other to be able to connect properly and, if they both want to, share a little more about themselves. That needs sign-in, blocking and reporting first, so it will come a step at a time.
I want people to be able to follow Together as it grows, so this page now exists. I will write here whenever something you could notice changes, in my own words, including what did not work and what comes next. There is also a feed if you would rather be told.
Behind the scenes, the site now builds its pages on the server. That means they load properly on a slow connection or an old phone, and they work even with JavaScript turned off. Pages that do not exist now say so honestly, instead of quietly showing the home page.
Together now has a home at together.acemedia.ninja. For now it is a single page with the promise at its heart: see the person before the border. There are no accounts or sign-ups yet, and nothing to join. I would rather open the doors slowly and safely than quickly.
Before building anything people can use, I asked for a hostile review of the idea itself: how could Together accidentally turn into a dating app, a popularity contest, a way of profiling people, a tool for harassment, a vehicle for political persuasion, or another endless feed? Each of those risks now has a written rule against it. A few examples:
photographs of people will never be used to match anyone;
nobody will ever see counts of likes, followers or rejections;
facts about two places will be rounded so they can never reveal where someone lives; and
statistics about a country will describe the place, never the person.
I also checked every public data source I plan to use against its own terms, rather than trusting memory. Some turned out to be non-commercial only, and one I had assumed was open is not, so those are on hold until I know what Together will be.