FAQ

Facebook lets you repost. TrustWeb lets you ask, and each person you trust decides whether to answer.

Reposting is a poor way to find anything: you hear about an offer only if you follow the right channel or someone happens to repost it. In TrustWeb you ask your web a question in plain words, and the people you are connected with decide, one by one, whether to share. It is built so that, in time, a question can travel on through several steps of trust, with consent at each step, instead of being broadcast. Today a question reaches the people you are directly connected with; the demo walkthrough shows a scripted example of the next step. The rings on the screen are one of many ways to draw a network. What counts is what you can do on top of it. A feed, where you tell people things, is optional and early: it is off by default, and you switch it on in Settings.

No. There are two ways in, and neither needs you to log your day.

One conversation at a time. Record a meeting, or speak a short debrief after an event ("I just met this person, they have this opportunity"). The app makes a transcript, and you pick the lines worth keeping as notes or as lines of your inventory. Each such line remembers the moment in the recording it came from. Trust grows one conversation at a time, and your inventory grows the same way.

One set-up step. If you already keep notes elsewhere, an import can add them as lines of your inventory. Imported lines show as unreviewed until you keep them (one tap per line, or "Mark all reviewed" for a whole import); lines you recorded or typed show as created step by step. Imported lines start as "Only me": nobody can ask about them until you say so. Today the import file is prepared on a Mac from one notes tool, so this route is for early users.

The problem exists without any app: what you tell people, they can pass on. What TrustWeb adds is control. You share only what you choose, and each inventory line has its own audience: acquaintances (everyone in your rings), friends, close friends, or only you.

Where things live: your notes, inventory, transcripts and recordings stay on your phone. There is no central database of everyone's inventory to attack. A question goes from phone to phone through a relay on our server in Switzerland. Messages are encrypted on one phone and opened on the other, so the relay cannot read them; it can see routing details, such as which address a message is for and when it arrived. The very first connection step between two phones, sent before they share a key, is the one message that is not encrypted. Backups, hosted recordings and sent meetings are encrypted on your phone first.

We do not claim a "zero-knowledge" system as a whole, because two things do read content. The demo inventory ("Demo inventory", a demo contact on our server with made-up lines) opens an ask sent to it and also shows it, with your demo name, to the person who runs it. And server transcription, once it is switched on (it is off today), handles your audio as audio, because the audio itself goes to be turned into text. Details are on the privacy page.

Trust in TrustWeb is not a score. You place each person in one of three rings you choose yourself (close friend, friend, acquaintance). Only people you have connected with can ask you anything, the ring sets what they may ask about, and every answer needs a yes from you: given live, or given in advance for a line you marked that way. A no looks exactly like "no match", so a decline gives nothing away. The honest limit: a network is only as trusted as the people you let into it, and TrustWeb cannot make a stranger trustworthy. Share only what you would be content to see passed on.

By pull, not push. Many people switch push notifications off, so TrustWeb does not depend on them: asks that reach you wait in one place for you to review. The reason to open the app is that you are looking for something and want to find it. Onboarding and habit are the hard part, and they are early: today the demo is the way in, with imaginary friends and nothing to set up.

Finding people and things through people you trust. You do not open TrustWeb to call a ride, a dedicated app does that better. You open it for what is not listed anywhere, or where it matters who is on the other end: who knows a good pediatrician, who has a room free for a few weeks, who has done this before. A marketplace could run on top of it later (marketplace is a planned use case, see use cases).

You should not have to. TrustWeb searches your own web and calls no search service itself. Below the search box (once you have typed words) and below every finished ask, a row "Search the web instead" offers plain links to Google, Ecosia, Qwant and Brave, carrying the same words. The row is labelled as outside TrustWeb, with untrusted results; nothing is sent to any engine until you tap one, and it opens in a new tab with no referrer. The trusted answer comes first. The open web only comes second.

Yes, meeting people and introductions come first. An example: someone with many years of experience in a field sits in a contact's inventory. You search for that topic, you see the line, and you ask for an introduction through the person you both trust. Shared interests are what connects people. Today a question reaches the people you are directly connected with; the demo walkthrough shows a scripted example of the next step, where the friend in the middle passes it on, so an introduction stays warm.

Being worked out. TrustWeb is experimental today; if you have a view on this, tell us.

That is why the recording is kept next to the transcript, not only the text. Where the audio was kept on your phone, you tap a transcript line, or a line you noted, and the recording plays from that moment, so you can hear how it was said. Recording a meeting needs a tick that the other person agreed.