About Respectify
Who Are We?
We are just two old friends (see below) who got really tired of awful comment sections. We think it is silly that you need to turn them off because people are so terrible. So we formed a Delaware C-Corp (because apparently that is what all the cool startups do) and we set about to clean up conversations on the web. Yes, that’s a tall order, but someone has to do it.
The Mission (Which we choose to accept)
Our goal is to civilize online discourse, because humanity clearly needs some assistance here. We aim to use AI to filter out spam, insults, bad arguing, logical fallacies, and general rudeness from comment sections. Along the way, we want to educate people on how to disagree politely yet firmly, so that everyone can make their point without being a jerk.
Basically, we, like a good beauty pageant contestant, are plotting world peace, but we want to do it through AI and polite, logical conversation.
Why AI?
Some folk think AI is evil. There’s good reason for that: AI artwork generators, for example, that mimic humans. People are trying to use AI to put other people out of work. That ain’t right. The future is supposed to be one where technology frees us to be creative, not does the creative work.
But AI is here to stay, realistically. So the question is: given it exists, can we use it for good?
The ethical intersection (as we see it) of AI, and work humans could do, is work humans do not want to do or that is downright unhealthy for them to do. Moderation is absolutely in this area: people suffer real trauma through what they see moderating. And whether global like Facebook, or personal like someone’s own blog, opening up comments leads to having to deal with comments. What if we can remove that?
Respectify does more than moderating: we try to teach people when we see commentary and thought that is not as well thought through as it could be. WorldwideWorld-wide the scale of this is far outside human reach to solve, and frankly, probably not the most fun task. That’s why we look to non-humans: AI.
The Team
We’re two different people, with different views, from different countries, who get along.
Nick Hodges
A co-founder, Nick is a long-time developer, a Navy-trained tech-nerd, and user of the Internet before AOL people ruined everything. He’s spent way too much time arguing on the Internet and too much time being a jerk about it. But he eventually learned to be not so much of a jerk, and now he wants to spread that wisdom and knowledge to all you fine people.
David Millington
Dave’s an Australian who lives in far-north Europe, where there’s seven months of winter. He’s had his moments of saying things he shouldn’t, and has come to believe in kindness as about the most important thing there is.
He’s on the third draft of his first novel: post-apocalyptic cli-fi in a drowned city that’s formed enclaves of different political systems. And libraries, socialism, startups, and Musk. A few sea monsters, too.
Our Core Beliefs (Yes, We Have Some)
- We believe that free speech and open discourse is cool, but so is not being an asshole while doing it.
- We believe that it is possible to have a civilized discussion and that logic, reason, and kindness can rule the day.
- We believe a conversation can share different, even opposing, viewpoints and can remain healthy throughout.
- We believe our society needs help. You’ve all seen online discourse. We, collectively, need to do something about it.
- We believe that a company need not be a frenzy of crazed all-nighters and furious grinding of effort, but instead, that things can be, well, calm.
So if you are tired of moderating comments by hand, or worse, of losing IQ points while reading them, come check us out.
Why Bears?
We have examples of poor internet comments on our site, but they’re all about bears. Why?
First, we don’t want real comments on our website. We want to write something where you’ll recognise it, and you know what Respectify will see in the real world, but where the example itself isn’t offensive.
As for bears? Nick suggested pineapple on pizza, which Dave considers a solved debate (yes.) Part of the backend is written in Python, and there’s a safety library called beartype which makes lots of bear puns. It all came from there.