Yapper

When you open most social apps, the first thing you see is whatever is loudest that morning. Yapper is built on the opposite idea: seeing hostile or triggering updates just because it's getting a lot of engagement should not be the default; claims should show their source; users should be protected from AI-slop fake news and stories; and the feed should reward what people agree on, not what makes them angry.

Low stress browsing

Yapper always opens on the Wholesome tab; including pets, gardening content, cooking, fun facts, and other wholesome content as tagged. News, sports, and other topics are available, but never pushed early to protect users from unethical engagement farming. Local feeds for yaps are available at the county level for relevant news and hashtags can be stacked.

Primary source support

Any post can include a source, and a #news post must include at least one. Sources are labeled by the five kinds of primary sources many libraries teach, and educational resources on "what counts as a primary source?" are easy to find when using the app. Unverified links are shown and marked rather than hidden. Every source keeps an archived copy. You can also explore all content on Yapper by what people cite.

Agreement over outrage

Posts that people like across different communities rise. Hostile posts sink to the bottom but are not deleted, and every ranked post explains why it is there. An open-source model inside the app judges hostility, tested against examples it should and shouldn't flag. Currently, the model doesn't sink harmless posts (no false positives), but it has known false negatives, such as missing coded hostility.