What's New Since Oct 9: Pink, Replayo, and More

Hi everyone, Johnny here.

It's been a busy couple of weeks at WhereTheyAsk. We're still free, still ad-free, and still a small community, and everything below was built with one goal: make this a place you actually want to hang out in. Here's what changed, roughly in the order it happened.

A friendlier front door (Oct 17)

A smoother first visit. We cleaned up the home page so new folks can see what WhereTheyAsk is about in the first minute, without having to dig.
A People page. A members' directory so you can find people to follow and say hi to (visible to signed-in, confirmed members).

Safety and fair rules (Oct 17–18)

Reporting and staff roles. You can now report posts or people that break the rules, and we have proper staff roles to handle those reports.
Clearer rules. We spelled it out: free speech is welcome here, within the community rules. We also tidied up the consent and copyright checkboxes so it's plain what you're agreeing to.
Block and mute. Someone bugging you? Block them. Need a break from someone's posts? Mute them. Your feed, your call.

More ways to react (Oct 19)

Posts in the feed now have reactions beyond a simple like: Care, Haha, Wow, Sad, and more. We also made the reaction labels darker so they're easier to read.

(And a small happy note: WhereTheyAsk picked up a product-of-the-week badge, which you'll see in the home page footer.)

Quiet privacy upgrades (Oct 19)

Not flashy, but these matter:

We keep less of your data. We trimmed what we store to what we actually need.
More sensitive data is encrypted. Direct messages, event details, sign-in secrets, and phone numbers are encrypted on our servers.
Calendar features are now opt-in. Nothing gets shared unless you turn it on.
Always a secure connection. After your first visit, your browser is told to always use a secure (https) connection to WhereTheyAsk, and the www address has its own proper certificate too. In plain terms: fewer ways for anyone to snoop on or tamper with your visit.

You asked for it, and it's back… Replayo

Short video clips are here. Replayo lets members post quick clips right on WhereTheyAsk. Record something funny, share a moment, show off your setup. They're short, they loop, and they're meant to be fun. We also put sensible size limits on uploads so things stay fast for everyone.

Make your profile yours (Oct 20)

Hot pink! We gave the site a brand refresh with a new signature color: hot pink (#EB007E). We also improved text contrast on profiles so everything stays easy to read.
Custom profile colors, CSS, and effects. You can style your profile your way, with your own colors, skins, CSS, and effects. If you noticed glitter or butterflies acting up on longer profiles, that's fixed. Your sparkle now goes all the way down the page.

A members-only home (Oct 20)

Confirm your email to join. New accounts need to confirm their email address. It's a small step that keeps out bots and throwaway accounts and helps make sure the people here are real.
Member pages are now members-only. As of today, the feed, profiles, rooms, and other member areas are only visible to signed-in members who've confirmed their email. What you post here is shared with the community, not the whole internet.
Tighter site protection. We locked down which scripts are allowed to run on WhereTheyAsk, so it's much harder for anything sneaky to be slipped into a page. We also fixed a batch of issues around sign-in sessions and email confirmation before launch day.

Encrypted DMs (live Oct 20, 2:30pm CT)

New direct messages (since 2:30pm CT Oct 20) are end-to-end encrypted. That means the content of your messages is scrambled on your device and only unscrambled on the other person's device. We can't read the text of those messages.

Let's be honest about what it is and isn't:

It's real end-to-end encryption for message content. It is not at the level of a dedicated secure messenger like Signal, mainly because it doesn't have forward secrecy (a feature that keeps old messages safe even if a key is exposed later).
Our server still knows who messages whom and when, roughly how long each message is, and it can see read receipts. It just can't read what you said in new messages.
Messages sent before encryption switched on stay readable by the server.
The person you're messaging needs an encryption key on their device first. If they haven't set one up yet, your message won't send until they do.
Attachments and group content aren't covered by the encryption yet.

For an extra check, you can compare safety numbers with a contact in person or on a call to check that no one has swapped in a different key.

If you need the strongest privacy out there for something sensitive, use a dedicated secure messaging app. For everyday chats with friends here, encrypted DMs are a big step up.

What's next

Our goal right now is simple: 100 real, active members. Not bots, not lurker counts, real people posting, chatting, and hanging out. If you like where this is going:

Invite a friend or two.
Post a Replayo.
Give your profile some glitter.

And tell us what you want next. This place gets built where you ask.

Thanks for being here, Johnny