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.
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 host 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.
- If you sort by distance, your location is used on your device to order the list. It is never sent to us.
- There are no attendee lists. Nobody, including the host, 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.
- Notices are deleted, not archived, three days after they end. In those three days they are off the board; the host can post the same thing again and people can still answer the anonymous question.
- To post, you verify an Australian mobile number. It is stored encrypted, recoverable only by the operator, and deleted 90 days after your last notice. It is never displayed.
- 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.
- Hosts 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 on the Eastern Shore, chosen from a fixed list. 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 host, 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 hosts hold Tasmanian Registration to Work with Vulnerable People.
The full rules are in the terms of use.
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 attend, so there is nothing to release about them.
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.