How LinkConnect actually works.

LinkConnect is a social network built around the people you actually chose. Your feed is chronological and limited to the accounts you link with — there is no ranking system deciding what you see, no suggested strangers dropped between your friends' posts, and no AI-generated filler.

Around that feed we've built the things people actually use social apps for: encrypted messaging (LinkChat), short human-made video (LinkClips), small communities (Link Circles), live audio rooms (Link Wave), real-world events and local discovery (Neighborhood), and a profile format we call the Link Card. Discovery still exists — it just lives in its own tab, so it can never quietly take over your feed.

Four differences that are structural, not cosmetic. First, the feed: chronological and following-only, so no ranking system decides which friends you forget. Second, no AI-generated content — no AI writer, no AI images, no synthetic accounts, and uploads are screened for generative media. Third, privacy you don't configure: messages are end-to-end encrypted with keys that never leave your device, there is no presence system at all (no green dots, no 'Active now', no 'Last seen'), and location has a real off switch.

Fourth, the scoreboard is gone. No public like counts, no streaks, no profile-view counters. Reactions are temperature-based — Hot, Warm, Cool, Cold, Electric — describing how something felt rather than tallying a score you can farm.

There are also things other apps simply don't have: Photo Conversations (replying to a photo with a photo), Photo Trails (your posts mapped as a journey), personas and Mood Sync on a single account, Link Circles, Link Wave audio rooms, and Neighborhood for what's actually happening around you.

LinkConnect is live now on the App Store for iOS. You can download it directly from the Download page. Android on Google Play is coming soon.

There is no invite hierarchy, no early-access tier you can pay for, and no queue-jumping for referrals.

Yes. LinkConnect is free for personal accounts at launch — every feature described on this site is included. No ads in your feed, no paid tier that changes what you see, and no subscription required to message, post, or join Circles.

If we ever introduce an optional paid add-on, it will not be a way to buy reach, ranking, or visibility in anyone else's feed. That line doesn't move.

Business accounts. Local businesses pay for optional promoted events and area campaigns, and that's the entire revenue model at launch.

The guardrails matter more than the model: promoted content is clearly labelled, capped at a small number of cards per day, and never enters a personal Connect Feed. Businesses only reach your feed if you deliberately follow them. There is no ad auction bidding for your attention, no behavioural ad targeting, and no data sold to advertisers or brokers — we don't have the profile to sell, because we don't build one.

We'd rather grow slower on business revenue than fast on your attention. It also means we're accountable to customers rather than advertisers, which is what makes the rest of these answers possible.

Every account is age-verified at 18 or older with a strict date-of-birth gate. Building a genuinely safe minors experience means age-appropriate moderation, guardian tooling, and different data rules — we'd rather not ship a half-measure. Accounts flagged as under 18 are removed.

It means AI cannot create content on LinkConnect. There is no AI post writer, no AI image or video generator, no AI reply suggestions, and no synthetic accounts. If something appears in your feed, a human made it.

We do use machine learning in two narrow, non-creative places: safety (detecting AI-generated or manipulated uploads, spam and bot behaviour, and content that violates our guidelines) and accessibility (optional on-device alt-text for images, and translation you explicitly request). Neither writes content for you, and neither decides your feed order.

Uploads run through a multi-layer authenticity check — EXIF and capture metadata, generative-image detection, and behavioural signals. Content scored as AI-generated is blocked from the feed, and you can appeal a wrong call. The full detail lives in our AI Policy.

Newest first, from the people and businesses you follow. That's the whole rule. There is no engagement score, no dwell-time weighting, no "because you interacted with…", and no re-ranking based on what keeps you scrolling.

Practically, that means an unpopular post from your closest friend outranks a viral post from an acquaintance, simply because it's newer. If you follow a lot of people, you'll see a lot of posts; the fix is unfollowing, not us secretly filtering for you.

Discover uses ranking, and we say so plainly. It's a separate tab you choose to open, and it's built on transparent, universal math rather than a personal behavioural profile: how recently something was posted, how quickly it's gaining engagement, and growth velocity for Rising Creators (relative growth, not raw follower counts, so a new account can surface).

The same rules apply to everyone. Discover ranking never leaks back into your Connect Feed, and nothing you do in Discover changes your feed order.

No infinite auto-advance designed to trap you, no streaks that punish you for taking a day off, no "someone is typing" pressure loops, no notification bait for activity you didn't ask about, and no public like counts to chase.

LinkClips is capped at 3 minutes per clip, clips you've already watched more than halfway are excluded from the queue, and when you reach the end you get a "You're caught up" screen instead of a fresh algorithmic refill.

Yes. LinkChat uses RSA-OAEP key exchange with AES-256-GCM message encryption. Your private key is generated on your device and stored in your device's IndexedDB — it never leaves your phone and is never uploaded to us.

We store the ciphertext. We cannot read your messages, and neither can anyone who compels us to hand over the database. The tradeoff is real: if you lose your device and your recovery material, those messages are unrecoverable. That's what actual end-to-end encryption costs.

Disappearing messages, view-once media with a five-second grace timer, and screenshot signals are all layered on top.

Only what a feature needs, and only at the precision you choose. Location precision has an explicit "off" setting that is enforced across the app — with it off, no location badges appear on your posts, your Photo Trails stay private, and you can still browse Neighborhood.

Neighborhood works from an approximate area rather than a pin on your house, and Explore mode lets you browse other cities without sharing your own position at all. Live location sharing in LinkChat is manual, time-limited, and per-conversation. We do not run background location tracking.

Only you, unless you decide otherwise. A Photo Trail joins the locations of your posts into a map of where you've been, and because that aggregate is more sensitive than any single tag, it starts private for everyone.

In Settings → Privacy → Photo Trails you control five things: who can see it (off, only me, Close Links, all your Links, or public), how precise it is (exact, neighborhood, city, region or country — you can share that you visited Paris without showing where you stood), how far back it goes (all history or a rolling 30, 90 or 365 days), what it leaves out (specific places with a radius around them, date ranges, or individual photos), and whether tagged people appear on it at all.

Turning location precision off globally still overrides everything: no location shows anywhere, trail included.

We collect the minimum needed to operate the app, we encrypt what matters most so that even we can't read it, and we don't sell any of it — not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to "partners".

Photos are stripped of EXIF metadata (including GPS) on upload where you haven't opted into location. Contact matching is done by normalizing and hashing numbers on your device with a platform pepper; non-matches are discarded and never stored. EU user data is stored in EU regions, and data in transit and at rest is encrypted.

On the security side: passwords are checked against known breach databases at signup, recovery uses one-time codes rather than security questions, and access to production data is restricted and audit-logged. No system is unbreakable — but the design goal is that a breach of us exposes as little about you as possible.

Yes, from inside the app, without emailing anyone or talking to a retention flow designed to change your mind.

Deletion starts a 90-day grace period during which your account is deactivated and invisible to others, so a decision made at 2am isn't irreversible. You can restore it during that window. After 90 days, erasure is permanent and cascading — posts, clips, comments, messages, media, Circles membership, and profile data are removed, and anything that must remain for integrity reasons (like a Circle's post count) is anonymized rather than kept against your name.

Before you delete, you can export everything you've created. GDPR and US state privacy requests — access, portability, correction, erasure — are honored with a 30-day response window at support@linkconnectapp.com.

No. There are no green dots, no "Active now", no "Last seen" timestamps, and no read-receipt pressure anywhere in the app — we removed the presence system entirely rather than making it a setting you have to find.

Nobody gets to know you opened the app and didn't reply.

There are three layers, and most people only ever notice the first. At signup, every account verifies an email address and a phone number: disposable email domains are blocked, one account is allowed per phone number, and there's a cap on accounts per device. Combined with a strict 18+ date-of-birth gate, that removes most throwaway and bulk-created accounts before they exist.

The second layer is continuous. Behavioural detection scores accounts on profile completeness, posting patterns, content, and community reports, with tiered rate limits and duplicate-content blocks. Suspicious accounts get restricted automatically, and every automated action is appealable to a human.

The third is the Link Seal — a visible five-point progress marker on your profile showing how thoroughly you've verified (email, phone, photo, activity history, and ID). Government-ID verification runs through a third-party identity provider; we see the pass or fail, not your document. It's optional for most people, and only required for higher-stakes things: live video, monetization, and running large Circles. Separately, an admin-granted verified badge exists for notable accounts and businesses — that one is about identity confirmation, not status.

No public like counts on posts. No follower-count vanity metric shown as a scoreboard. No streaks. No "X people viewed your profile" anxiety loops.

Reactions are temperature-based — 🔥 Hot, 🌡️ Warm, ❄️ Cool, 🧊 Cold, ⚡ Electric — which describes how something made you feel instead of ranking it. There's no public counter to game, so there's nothing to farm.

LinkClips ends. Notifications are batched into windows rather than fired instantly, with Quiet Hours and a catch-up digest. Reduce Motion is auto-detected, and accessibility defaults target WCAG 2.1 AA.

Yes. Close Links is a private inner circle (up to 50 people) for posts meant for a handful of humans. Personas — Social, Creative, Professional, Anonymous, Intimate — let you separate parts of your life on one account, and Intimate and Anonymous content never leaks into Discovery.

Muted words (up to 100), muted hashtags, restricting an account without blocking it, and sensitive-content blurring with manual reveal are all available. Blocking creates a decoy private state, so a blocked person can't tell they were blocked.

Decisions are made by humans. Automated systems triage — they detect likely spam, bot activity, AI-generated uploads, and known-violating material, and they sort the queue by severity — but removals, suspensions, and appeals are reviewed by a person on our moderation team.

Reports are prioritized across 10+ categories, with safety-of-life categories jumping the queue. An item reaching 10 reports is automatically placed on hold pending human review, and a 3-report throttle stops one person from mass-reporting someone they dislike.

It enters the moderation queue with a priority based on category, reporter history, and how many independent reports it has. You get a confirmation, and where the outcome affects you directly, an update.

Every moderation action is written to an audit log. Admin accounts operate as platform moderators only — they cannot post socially from an operator profile, moderation actions are attributed generically rather than to a named staff member, and any report touching an admin's own content or account is routed away from them to avoid conflicts of interest.

Yes, for both moderation removals and automated bot-detection actions. Appeals go to a human reviewer who did not make the original call, and the outcome is logged.

If an authenticity check wrongly flags your photo as AI-generated, that's appealable too — false positives happen, and we'd rather review them than quietly delete your work.

Email support@linkconnectapp.com or use the Support page in the app. Tickets get a readable reference number (LC-YYYY-XXXX) so you can follow up on the same thread instead of starting over.

For outages and degraded service, our live status page is at /status, with RSS and email subscriptions.

Only businesses you deliberately follow appear in your feed, and they're visually distinct — squared logos, a yellow accent, and a BUSINESS chip — so you always know who's talking. Business accounts never appear in the Connect Feed otherwise.

Promoted content is limited to a small number of clearly labelled cards per day and lives in discovery surfaces, not between your friends' posts.

A business account is a separate account type with its own tools rather than a badge on a personal profile. It gets a verified public profile with hours, location, contact details and an open/closed status; a customer inbox with follow-up flags, archiving and reply tracking; and reviews from verified humans, including photo reviews and public responses (a business can flag a review for moderation but can't delete it).

For reaching people locally: Neighborhood listing so nearby customers can find you, events with RSVPs and reminders, live broadcasting, LinkClips, and their own Link Circles for regulars. Location sharing works in customer messages, so answering "where are you?" takes one tap.

Everything above is free. The paid layer is optional promoted events and area campaigns, capped and clearly labelled. Full detail is on the Business page.

No. LinkConnect has no advertising in personal feeds and no plans to add any. The only paid visibility is from business accounts — optional promoted events and area campaigns — and those live in discovery surfaces, clearly labelled and capped, not between your friends' posts.

No. We don't sell personal data to advertisers, brokers, or partners, and we don't build behavioural profiles to monetize. End-to-end encryption means we can't read most of your private data anyway. Business accounts pay for promotion; that's the revenue model.

If we ever introduce paid features, they will be additive conveniences — never ways to buy reach, rank above someone else, or unlock access to personal data. The free version of LinkConnect will remain fully usable, and the Connect Feed will never be a pay-to-play surface.

Because the people using a social network should not be the product. Businesses pay to reach local customers who already want to hear from them. Personal users get the whole app without ads, and their feed is never a target for sale.