389 karma · joined March 3, 2014
A little story: It’s 6 AM and I find myself compulsively scrolling through public outrage videos and dog photos. I’m scrolling through my twitter feed, finding punchy sentences on the latest trend and tragedy. I feel like my thoughts are becoming limited to what I can fit in 140 characters, and anxious comparing myself to other’s carefully tailored personas. With the feed’s algorithms working in opaque ways and beholden to maximizing advertising revenue, I found it difficult to find thoughtful articles on my interests. Unwilling to wait for the platforms to suddenly become altruistic, I decided to make an alternative. A healthier option to disseminate articles and essays that promote understanding, nuance, insight, and focus.
Here's two key features that make Gem stand out:
- Adjectives - Rating with adjectives help us better understand your taste. We scan the article to determine the adjectives you’d naturally use. These adjectives are derived from criteria like objectivity, importance, and convincingness. Above all, this keeps out sensationalism and improves quality.
- Control - For every feed we have settings which let you filter by type (e.g. tutorials, opinions, and news) or adjust the influence of factors like your viewing history and popularity.
Thanks so much for checking out Gem. We look forward to hearing your feedback! ️
1. Add public keys to your buddies list— A public key is like a username - Adding someone’s public key to your buddies list lets you send them messages. You can find other public keys on markets like keybase.io and darknet.
2. Encrypt a message— Select a recipient from your buddies list and compose a message. Only your chosen recipient(s) can read the message. Encrypted messages might contain sensitive information, such as an address, document, or anything intended to be read only by intended recipients.
3. Send the encrypted message anywhere— You can send the encrypted message on any website! For example, facebook messenger, twitter direct message, or youtube. Felony is security when and where you want it.
I’ve had a passion for politics, history, and programming since the age of 12 growing up in a suburb of Chicago. During my freshman year, I developed an interest in software. A couple of apps and hackathons (programming competitions) later, I was working on my own startups when I made the leap to drop out of high school to become a software engineer at a venture-backed tech startup.
While working there I learned that PGP encryption was the tool used by Edward Snowden to securely send messages to journalists. The immense value of encryption as a core component of our free society became clear to me. Amongst fellow coders, I had no trouble using command-line encryption to communicate. But my friends who didn’t code couldn’t easily do the same since they don’t know how to use the command-line. Given how important encryption is, I decided to build a first-rate encryption tool that could be used by anyone on any website, regardless of background.