A few weeks ago, we were showing Plurality to a community builder we deeply respect. He told us that our platform didn’t work for him. He hosts potlucks across many towns, and before anyone walks through the door, he needs to ask them a series of questions, from dietary restrictions to consents. Our event pages had no way to ask. So we built one.
Around the same time, another organizer told us the word “volunteers” didn’t fit her people because it implies a directionality of service. Folks that attend her events are all just neighbors and friends showing up for each other, and they have a unique word to describe them: “camerados.” So we made that Volunteer tab customizable too.
These are small changes, but they reflect the company we’re trying to build. We want Plurality to be co-built with the folks who are building communities, and we want to earn their trust. We talked with hundreds of them before we wrote a single line of code, we host Community Hours every day to hear what’s working and what isn’t, and we keep adjusting the platform to fit the work folks are already doing.
During these conversations, most folks tell us that they love the tools we are building but many of them share the same comment: “I just hope we didn’t need another tech platform.” We tell them we wholeheartedly agree.
Adam and I are a strange pair to have started a tech company. We don’t trust tech and deeply dislike what it is doing to the people and communities we love.
In my own neighborhood, I’ve seen how social media affects the kids I mentor. Their whole lives are marked by what happens on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. They are told repeatedly that their “worth” is measured by how they act and look, what they wear, and what they do. They tell me they rarely have meaningful conversations with their closest friends because it’s too hard now.
Most tech companies run on the same model. You and your community are the product. Every second of your attention gets sliced up, measured, and sold. The longer you scroll, the more they earn, so everything is designed to keep you scrolling: your friendships, your outrage, your loneliness. All of it is monetizable.
The part that breaks most people’s trust is that many tech companies know the harm they cause and do little to fix it. A Reuters investigation last November, built on Meta’s own internal documents, found the company projected about $16 billion in a single year, roughly 10% of its revenue, from ads for scams and banned goods. Meta’s response wasn’t to stop but to set a goal of trimming that share to 6% by the end of 2026. Just this month, a BBC investigation found ads on Instagram in India steering people toward child sexual abuse material, and India’s government gave Meta seven days to explain how ads like that got approved at all.
The newer platforms aren’t better. They’re making us lonelier. A 12-month study published in Psychological Science this year followed more than 2,000 adults and found that lonely people turn to AI chatbots for companionship, but it only made the loneliness worse over time. Researchers at Aalto University believe this is caused by the way the chatbots operate: AI “friends” never ask anything of you, which makes real friendships, the messy kind that require effort, patience, and a little bit of discomfort, feel too difficult. The companies building these tools have seen this research. Many of them wrote it.
So we built Plurality to run in the opposite direction.
We don’t want your attention. We want you to spend as little time on our platform as possible. Every tool we build pushes you back into real life, toward the deep sense of belonging that comes from shared moments with new and old friends. We’ve even made the most meaningful tools of Plurality work over text messages. If someone can receive a text, they can fully take part. Nobody has to download anything.
We are also committed to never sell your data to brokers. Our business model is simple enough to fit in a sentence: we take a small commission when your community donates to support your work, and we offer optional add-ons for organizers who want them. We only make money when you grow and your community thrives. There’s no version of our success that requires us to treat you or your community as a product.
We see our role as giving you good tools, getting out of the way, and listening when you tell us the word “volunteers” isn’t the right word.
So grateful someone is building tech that helps us encourage and live IRL relationships. Bravo!!