Wavelength - Group Chat

Wonderfully thoughtful, impressively technical app. The team would quickly add quality features and the premise of a decentralized, no-cloud E2EE platform is a fantastic objective. Without proper moderation features to block and mute individuals to avoid seeing their content, however, this app is a non-starter for many I wanted to try to bring to the platform. Several of the initial communities on the platform have incredibly racist and aggressive individuals that can't be avoided because of the lack of moderation tools. This app is best when interacting with dynamic group chats of hundreds of people, but as with any large group, there will be people that a user won't want to interact with. This app persists the ongoing stereotype of male/pale-run tech startups that don't consider the benefits of moderation tools, making spaces more accessible and inclusive for non-male / non-white users. It perpetuates the Silicon Valley / tech bro / libertarian echo chambers and systemically prevents diverse participation. After a couple months of use, I left the app and can't consider returning to it until these safety are added on. I grew tired of opening the app to incredibly bigoted viewpoints that I can't avoid reading in groups I'd otherwise want to engage with.

At first I was skeptical and thought “do I really need another chat app?“ After joining a few active groups, I am absolutely hooked. You really see how design makes a huge difference an app specifically designed for group chat, feels very different to Telegram or ‎WhatsApp, or any of the other apps that are made for one-to-one communication.

The marquee feature first: the AI interaction supercharges every conversation. It’s like the old “let’s Google that” but doesn’t necessitate halting the conversation. The sleeper hit: threading makes sense out of conversations you have with people that you have more than one reason to write to. Wish I had critical mass to extend that to groups, and I can’t wait until that’s the case. I can’t wait to give this outfit some money, but I hope I can convince a bunch of my friends to join first. Subset of feature 1: the AI bots invite the same kind of blue-sky thinking that Chat AI did last year. Who do you want in on your conversation? Or who do you want to have a chat with? The three-famous-people dinner is no longer hypothetical. Your favorite deceased author? A striking fictional character? Your cat? Set the table and invite them in.