Trust and Privacy

"Trust is something that exists between people. It's not something that can be imposed from above."

thisnow is built on a simple premise: privacy does not come from a central authority. It is created and maintained through the choices you make about who you trust and what you share.

What your circle shares

When you send a message to a circle, the people in that circle receive it. They can store it, copy it, screenshot it, or forward it. No app can prevent a trusted contact from choosing to share what you send. You should only share information with people you're willing to trust with it.

What we run during the alpha

thisnow is in private alpha. During the alpha the operator runs helper infrastructure so the app works end-to-end while the peer network is still small:

• A bootstrap / signalling relay so two phones can find each other and open a direct connection.
• A holding node (a Holochain conductor we operate) that stays online to hold encrypted circle data when the members' phones are offline, so nobody loses history overnight.
• A wake gateway that delivers push notifications to your phone when a circle peer wants to reach you.
• A public-profile web layer that renders your profile at thisnow.be/people/yourname when you choose to publish one.

What that infrastructure sees

• Public-profile content you have marked public.
• Encrypted Holochain records for circles whose membership includes a peer your node is already connected to.
• Handle registrations (the name you picked, linked to your Holochain agent key).
• IP addresses of connecting peers, briefly, for bootstrap and rate-limiting. Rotated within days.

What that infrastructure cannot see

• The plaintext of messages sent inside a circle you are not in.
• The membership list of a private circle beyond the peers the operator's node happens to be connected to.
• Your identity key — that is generated on your phone and never leaves it.

What the operator does not do

• No advertising. No ad networks, no ad identifiers.
• No analytics, telemetry, or fingerprinting.
• No third-party SDKs that report usage externally.
• No selling, sharing, or monetising user data in any form.

Details of what the app and the infrastructure do and don't do are in the compliance appendix.

Why we say "during the alpha"

The helper infrastructure exists because thisnow is small. It is not the intended shape of the system at scale. As the peer network grows, the operator's role as a holding node shrinks. This document will be updated when that changes, and not before.

Deletion and retrieval

thisnow does not operate a central user database. If you want content off your own device, uninstall the app or delete it in-app. Content you sent other people is on their devices; whether they delete it is their choice. Public-profile content removed in-app disappears from thisnow.be within the cache TTL (minutes).

Inspired by: https://youtu.be/ejzln2lst0M