OK, team.

A map of free things happening near you today that anyone can walk into, with nothing on it that can make you feel unwanted. You don't need a great team. Just an OK one.

Loneliness is poison. The places that used to fix it were free and public: the park, the beach, the library, the oval. They still are. What was missing was a way to find out that something is happening in them today, and permission to just turn up. This is that. Nothing more.

Why this exists, in plain words.

How it works

Drop in. No RSVP, no attendance, no "you missed three in a row". A thing that happens every Saturday still expects nothing of you.
Nothing that can read as rejection. No interested counts, no seen-by, no comments. A notice nobody has looked at is identical to one fifty people have.
Going anyway. Every notice is someone doing something they were going to do anyway. Turning up is welcome, not expected.
Thirty seconds. The phone finds the thing, then goes back in the pocket. No chat, no photos, no streaks, no notifications we send you.

What we will never build

Feed, likes, reactions, comments, followers, profiles, direct messages, interested counts, photos of people, attendance history, streaks, badges with names on them, notifications we start, advertising, subscriptions, or accounts for browsing.

One exception, stated plainly. There is a single page listing local businesses who hold a free, regular get-together under a pledge: nothing to buy, no pitch, open to anyone. They are named there, with a link to their site, only while the fixture runs. They get no placement anywhere else and no effect on what you see. During the pilot it costs them nothing.

Privacy: nobody is tracked

You do not need an account to browse, and browsing sets no cookie. Signing in sets one cookie that says which account this device belongs to, for thirty days, and it is used for nothing else.
If you sort by distance, your location is used on your device to order the list. It is never sent to us.
"Walk there" and "Walk past" work the same way. Your phone downloads a map of Greater Hobart's paths and streets once, then works out the walk itself. Where you are, where you start from and the route you get are never sent to us or to anyone. The only thing fetched while you look at it is the map picture.
There are no attendee lists. Nobody, including the holder, can see who looked at a notice or who went.
There are no analytics, no advertising identifiers, no third-party scripts. The only outside server this page talks to is the map tile server, which receives map tile coordinates and no referrer. When a holder drops a pin for a new place, our server, not your browser, asks the state land register and OpenStreetMap about that point, and nothing about who asked.
Notices are deleted, not archived, three days after they end. In those three days they are off the board; the holder can post the same thing again and people can still answer the anonymous question.
To hold something or register, you need an account. An account is a verified Australian mobile number and nothing else: no password, no email, no profile, no history anyone can see. The number is stored encrypted, recoverable only by the operator, never displayed, and deleted after a year unused or the moment you ask.
Accounts exist so that a real person is accountable for every notice and every registration, and so that a holder who has a bad experience can report it and patterns reach us. They are not used to track, profile, target or sell. You can see everything held about you, and delete it, on your account page.
Some holders require registration, for safety. Then the same applies to your number, and the holder sees a first name for that day only. Nothing is stored about anyone at a notice without registration.
The optional after-questions ("did you come alone?", "would you come again?", an age band) store the answer and the kind of happening. Not the notice, not the device, not you.
Page loads are tallied per day as plain numbers, with no identifiers, so we can tell a funder roughly how much the board is used.
Holders can choose, when posting, to give a rough headcount afterwards. It is only ever added up and never shown.
There is an optional, anonymous twenty-second check-in using a standard loneliness measure, so we can show whether this does anything real.
The code is open source, so all of this can be checked rather than trusted.

Safety: nobody is trapped

Notices can only be at public, visible places across Greater Hobart, chosen from a fixed list or pinned and checked. Private addresses are not possible.
Outdoor happenings run between 7am and 9pm. Later needs a staffed venue such as a library.
There is no way to message anyone. No channel exists through which a person can be contacted or moved somewhere private.
Every notice is an open group. Notices cannot contain links, phone numbers or emails.
Posting needs a verified mobile, and new posters are limited until a few notices have run without a report.
Every notice is screened before it appears: no contact details in any disguise, nothing for sale, nothing sexual, hateful or unlawful. A person looks at the first notice from every new holder, at anything the screen flags, and at anything reported by more than one person, before or while it is on the board.
Every notice has a report link. A person reads every report, usually within hours, and takes notices down.
You must be 18 or over to post. Happenings for under-18s can only be listed by verified organisations whose holders hold Tasmanian Registration to Work with Vulnerable People.

The full rules are in the terms of use.

Check on me: the after-event text

A verified person going to something alone can nominate someone they trust. Fifteen minutes after the notice ends we text the person once: "all good?" If they reply, or tap the link, that is the end of it. If we hear nothing within an hour we send their nominated contact one message: their first name, the notice, the place and the end time, so the contact can ring them. The holder is never involved and is never told. We hold the nominated number encrypted while the verification lasts, and the check itself for two days. If you received one of these messages, someone chose you as the person to ring them.

Hiding a holder is the other private option: a verified person can stop a holder's notices appearing on their own board. The holder is not told and nothing is counted.

If police or a court ask

We hold, for each poster, an encrypted mobile number and the notices they posted, for 90 days after their last notice. We release that to police or a court on a lawful request and not otherwise. We hold nothing about people who browse or walk up. Where a holder required registration, we hold a first name and an encrypted number for those who registered, for a month, and would release those on the same lawful request. A nominated check-on-me contact is held encrypted and released on the same basis and no other.

Who runs this

A GP on the Eastern Shore who is tired of watching loneliness do its work, with help from friends. It costs a few hundred dollars a year and is paid for out of pocket. If it grows, it will be a not-for-profit and funded by grants and councils, never by advertising or by charging people.

Tell us what would work better

Everything here is a first attempt. If a rule feels wrong, a word is off-putting, or something you need is missing, say so. It is read by a person and it changes things.

Every notice here is someone doing something they were going to do anyway. Turning up is welcome, not expected.

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