About Earde

Why we built this

The internet’s largest communities are almost exclusively hosted in the US, run by US corporations, and subject to US data practices. We believe Europe needs its own digital public square.

Earde is an open-source, proudly european discussion platform. We built this to be GDPR-compliant by design, hosted entirely on european servers, free from data harvesting, and strictly moderated against hate speech. We want to prove that a modern social aggregator can be privacy-respecting and community-driven without treating its users as products.

Who is building this?

Earde isn’t a product of Silicon Valley, it’s being built from the italian alps.

I’m Dami, the developer. I have a degree in philosophy and a deep interest in formal logic. I also love to write code.

The name Earde comes from cimbrian, an ancient germanic language still spoken in a few isolated villages here in the alps. It means “earth&rdquo, “soil&rdquo, “land”. We chose it because we want to build something grounded and far removed from the hyper-commercialized “clouds” of modern big tech.

I am not doing this alone. My friend Nico is the other half of the brain behind Earde. He doesn’t write a single line of code, and that is exactly why he is essential. Nico acts as the product manager. He ensures the platform is built for human beings, focusing on user experience, community dynamics, and keeping my engineering decisions aligned with our core philosophy.

The alternatives (and why we are different)

We aren’t the first to try building a community platform. Here is exactly where we stand compared to the rest of the landscape:

• How is it different from Reddit? Aside from being hosted in the EU, Earde is fully open-source. We retain zero unnecessary data, run as little JavaScript as possible, and we try to build our code for speed, not for tracking your every click.
• How is it different from Lemmy or Mastodon? We are fully centralized. We believe the Fediverse is a fantastic technical experiment, but it is fundamentally hostile to the average user. Earde is designed to be frictionless: you sign up in three seconds and start using it. No instances, no delays, no confusing server rules.
• How is it different from Discuit? We actively want to raise capital to hire a real team, invest in marketing, and genuinely compete on a global scale (read our investment strategy below to see how we plan to do this without ruining the site).
• How is it different from Squabbles? Squabbles launched with a “free speech absolutist” approach that quickly spiraled into toxic community management. We take a firm stance: we will enforce the deletion of hate speech, racism, and harassment. Freedom of discussion requires a safe environment to discuss in.

Transparency & Privacy Policy

We believe in radical data minimalism. We do not track your off-site activity, we do not sell your email, and we permanently delete what needs to be deleted. For the exact technical details of how your data flows through our EU servers, read our Technical Privacy Policy here.

Core features

We baked our philosophy directly into the code:

• Public moderation logs: every ban, deleted post, and rule change made by moderators is visible in a public log.
• The Council of Equals: there is no single “dictator” for a community. The top tier of moderation is shared by a council of up to 3 top mods with equal permissions.
• The anti-squatter rule (3-month expiry): if a top mod is inactive on Earde for 3 months, they automatically lose their status.
• Optional downvote shadowing: for highly sensitive communities, founders can enable downvote shadowing to prevent dogpiling and toxicity, while keeping the platform democratic.
• No infinite scrolling: by default, Earde uses pagination. When you reach the bottom, it stops. We want to prevent doomscrolling.
• No gamification: no awards, no paid badges, no gimmicks designed to artificially drum up engagement.

Community guidelines

Earde is a curated space.

• No illegal content, CSAM, or extreme violence.
• No hate speech, racism, or targeted harassment.
• No spam, self-promotion bots, or malicious links.

Individual communities can enforce stricter rules, but these global rules are non-negotiable.

Our investment strategy (The “enshittification” dilemma)

Let’s address the elephant in the room. Most tech startups raise massive venture capital, which forces them to chase infinite hyper-growth. This inevitably leads to the “enshittification” of the product: aggressive ads, dark patterns, and algorithm manipulation just to satisfy a $400M valuation.

However, building a real Reddit competitor requires serious money for servers, legal compliance, and marketing. We believe funding is not a black-and-white issue. There is a difference between raising $400M from predatory Silicon Valley VCs and raising $2M from EU-aligned funds, angel investors, or european tech grants. A smaller, sensible funding round could allow us to hire a dedicated team and reach break-even profitability gracefully, without ever needing to sell out our users to hit impossible revenue targets.

Furthermore, given Earde’s explicitly pro-european, privacy-first political stance, we are entirely open to philanthropic funding models. So if you are an EU-aligned philanthropist, give us money! :) Let’s build the european internet together. Reach out: dami@earde.com.

Future Roadmap

• Free public API: we want to build a free, robust API so developers can build third-party apps and moderation bots.
• Toggleable infinite scroll: while we believe pagination is healthier, we will add an account-level toggle for users who prefer continuous scrolling.
• Saved content: a private bookmarking system so you can save insightful posts and comments to read later, without relying on browser bookmarks.
• Private messaging: we will implement user-to-user direct messages, but with a strict anti-abuse philosophy. It will be an opt-in system where you completely control who can reach your inbox, preventing the spam and harassment common on other platforms.
• Modmail & council tools: to make the Council of Equals work smoothly, we want to build internal communication tools for moderators to coordinate, and a transparent “modmail” system for users to appeal decisions or contact the moderation team securely.
• Custom feeds: since we refuse to use algorithms to guess what you want to read, we will build a feature allowing you to group specific communities together (e.g., a custom “tech & science” feed) for pure, chronological reading.

While we have our baseline goals, Earde belongs to its users. The features we prioritize and build next will ultimately be the ones most requested by you. We build what the community actually asks for. So if you have any idea or feature request, please text me at dami@earde.com!