Human-Only Social Media Principles

You run your account.

An account is for a person to use themselves. Bots and agents cannot operate it, even with your permission. Signing in is only one step; it does not mean identity verification is complete.

What protection can we promise?

We are developing identity checks, secure sign-in and protections against automated access. Android can offer screen protections that a browser cannot. We will describe tested protections accurately, rather than claim that every device or every attack is covered.

Your work belongs here.

A story you wrote. A photograph you took. Something you spent a long time learning to make. AI assistance to your own work is allowed; fully generated submissions are not.

Adding a caption, crop or filter to a generated image does not make it human-created. Checks can get things wrong, so our review process must give people a reason and a way to appeal.

Sharing is not giving up your rights.

You keep the rights you already hold in your work. Posting something does not prove ownership, and it does not give you permission to share someone else's private photos, voice or messages.

We do not intend to use your posts to train generative AI. Content checks involve processing submissions; the launch privacy notice must explain the providers involved and how long data is kept.

A feed you can understand.

Following is designed to show the newest published posts first. Discover starts with topics you choose. Likes and time spent watching are not part of the planned ranking rules.

Read the rules and suggest a change. We will distinguish the published plan from the version actually running.

Stay because you want to.

We are designing for pages with an end, videos that wait for you to press play, and notifications you choose. No streak to protect. No penalty for taking a break.

Starting small. Open to the world.

Manthar is an Android app. There is no browser version of the social network; this website carries public information only. Accounts will open in stages as verification and support are ready. We have not announced an iOS release date.

The first release is for people aged 18 and over, checked privately. Ages will not be profile badges. This is a general-audience community, with no adult-content mode.

About this website.

A third-party hosting provider serves the public pages of this website. The public pages hold no account area: there is no web sign-in, no web profile and no web feed. Accounts and their passkeys live in the Android app, and Manthar’s own server checks every session before any account content is shown. Your theme choice is saved in your browser.

If you join the release notification list, your email is stored with the mailing list service we use. Do not use it to send private messages or documents. The support page lists our contact.

The photographs illustrate everyday life. They are not user posts or endorsements. Priscilla Du Preez, Jakub Gorajek, Marcelo Matarazzo and Brooke Cagle supplied the CC0 photographs.

The pottery photograph by Earthen Potter is resized, WebP-encoded and cropped in the page layout under CC BY-SA 4.0.