Early Beta: join, verify, and participate safely
Make it easy to join and read, verify for trust, and gate participation by tier. Ship account states, reporting, and paid membership with enforced entitlements.
Trust & access (essential)
- Account states — Active / suspended / banned with consistent enforcement (posting, messaging, uploads, and real-time connections).
- Identity verification (provider-agnostic) — We submit verification requests to an external provider, trust the response, and store a simple status lifecycle (pending → verified → revoked) with timestamps and reason codes. Done
- Premium requires verified — You can’t subscribe to (or keep) premium unless you’re verified. This is enforced in upgrade flow and in premium-only actions (member areas, media, etc.). Done
Tier access (v1)
- Unverified read-only (plus private notes) — Read public posts and longform, follow, bookmark, and manage profile basics; can create Only me private notes/drafts; no public posting, replies, or reactions. Done
- Verified participation limits — React, post, and reply within limits (rate limits may be lower than Premium; configurable by admins); text + links only (no images/GIFs/video); men-only read areas; no dialogues; can reply to DMs started with them but cannot start new DMs. Done
- Premium baseline access — Full posting and replies, member-only areas, can start DMs, and can post with media; Premium is baseline (unverified/verified may be slightly suppressed); paid tiers are neutral (no boosted reach). Done
Premium membership (launch)
- Stripe subscriptions — Premium ($25/mo) and Premium+ ($75/mo) billing with verification gating; entitlements are enforced in the upgrade flow and settings. Premium+ is a supporter tier with no special power. Done
Getting started & discovery
- Landing & onboarding — Clear homepage and signup; smooth onboarding so you can post and follow in your first session. In progress
- Discover / non-empty feed — When you have zero follows, a “Discover” or “For you” feed (trending or recent public posts) so your home feed is never empty. Done
- Suggested users / who to follow — Real “who to follow” (by interests or activity) so you fill your feed fast and see content that matters. Done
- Invite a friend — Shareable signup or invite link (“Join me on Men of Hunger”) so you can bring friends and grow the circle. Premium members: when someone you invite verifies, they get a free month of premium.
Staying in the loop
- Push notifications — Reply, follow, and boost notifications so you never miss a beat. Done
- Email re-engagement (v1) — Daily digest, “you have new notifications” nudges, and instant high-signal emails (provider: Resend). Done
- PWA / Add to home screen — Install the app on your phone (icon, splash, offline where useful) for an app-like experience without the app store. Done
Reporting (minimal for launch)
- Report post / Report user — “Report” in the post menu and on profiles; pick a reason and add details; we store it and admins can triage. A fuller queue and resolution flow follows in April. Done
Ops, reliability & learning
- Feedback — Send us bugs and ideas; we store and triage so we can improve. Done
- Reliability — Rate limits and clear “try again later” when needed; we test sign up → onboard → post → upgrade so the core flow works. Done
- Sentry — Error tracking is wired up for the web app; API Sentry still needs to be added so we catch regressions end-to-end. In progress
- Third-party analytics (minimal) — Track the key funnel events (join, verify submitted/approved, first post, follow, upgrade) so we can measure what’s working.