I'll keep this honest, because honesty is the whole point of porchstroll.
For years I've watched the places we go to talk to each other turn into places that talk about us instead — to advertisers, to data brokers, to whoever's buying. Somewhere along the way we became the product. Most of us know it by now. We just haven't had anywhere else to go.
I kept waiting for someone to build the alternative — something that felt like a real neighborhood instead of a slot machine. A place you could spend time without the low hum of being measured, sorted, and sold. It didn't show up. So I decided to try to build it myself.
For me it started with email, and more recently than you'd think. I was moving off Gmail to something that respected my privacy, and I managed it — then switched to Apple's Mail app, figuring that since it wasn't Apple's email service, I was in the clear. I'd already turned the AI features off on my phone. Or I thought I had. The app showed me an AI summary of my messages anyway.
I had said no, and it hadn't mattered. That's a small thing to be annoyed by, and it's the thing that made me start noticing everything I'd stopped noticing — like searching for something on Google, then opening the Amazon app to find it already sitting there, waiting for me. The walls I assumed were between these apps aren't really there. I've spent time in technology and marketing, so I know how that machinery works. And once I was paying attention, the conclusion I couldn't shake was that the worst possible place for it to be happening is the place where we socialize.
I'm building porchstroll as a nonprofit on purpose. Not for a tax break — we're choosing to pay our share like anyone else who uses the same roads and schools. I did it because a nonprofit can't be sold to the highest bidder, can't be pushed by investors to start squeezing the people who use it, and can't quietly hand its profits to insiders. Once the Articles are filed, that promise won't be a setting I can flip on a Tuesday — it'll be part of what porchstroll legally is. We're not incorporated yet, and I'd rather tell you exactly where we are than round it up.
I don't think privacy should be a premium feature. I don't think a feed should be engineered to keep you angry so you'll stay a little longer. I don't think the people who build a thing should get rich while the people who use it get harvested. None of that is radical. It used to just be called being decent.
porchstroll is small right now, and I intend to keep it honest as it grows — which is why this whole site shows its work, including the parts we haven't figured out yet. If we ever stop living up to any of this, I want you to be able to point at our own words and hold us to them.
Pull up a chair. I'm glad you're here.
Keith
Founder, porchstroll