Frequently Asked Questions

Read the Room is built by Soud and his friends: an independent team of scientists, engineers, and volunteers who care about bridging cultures and mapping how ideas spread.

Because understanding how people think and feel should be a public good, not a product. Read the Room is structured as a nonprofit initiative.

Yes. We never collect names or personal identifiers. Your responses are aggregated into maps and charts, so what you see is what we see: patterns—not profiles. Our data database is structured so that even we cannot see correlations in the answers between questions, and most user data is stored on-device. Our code is open source, and you can read more in our privacy policy.

We want to create the world’s first “human bioindicator”—a way for communities, researchers, and everyday people to track how ideas and moods flow across cultures in real time in response to both global and local events. If you’d be interested in a browse-only website to puruse or download datasets, please reach out at [email protected]

The most popular new question from the previous fortnight becomes the new Question of the Day. This keeps the platform nimble and community-driven, not algorithm-driven.

No likes, no followers, no algorithm. Just questions, answers, and patterns. The goal is insight, not addiction. Our design philosophy is simple, we do not want anyone using the app for more than 15 minutes a day.

Your fingerprint/faceID is a quick way to check that you are the device owner, so that only you can access your locally stored information. It works like this: your phone sends a ‘yes’ reponse when the app asks: is this the device owner?; this also provides a minimum barrier against bots.

Read the Room was originally a website. We felt that a mobile app futhered our mission better and is technologicially the more suitable medium.

No. Read the Room collects opinion data with the aim of building an open, trusted, dataset for research and public understanding—not to train generative AI models or profit from commercial AI development. Your responses are anonymously aggregated and may in future be shared with researchers, academics, and institutions doing genuine social science work. We won’t license RTR data to companies building AI products designed to maximize engagement or extract value from users. We’re a small team deeply committed to privacy and collective understanding—if you have questions or concerns about how your data is used, we genuinely want to hear from you.

Yes! You can spread the word, set up your widgets, and leave a good app store review!! Every bit helps keep Read the Room free, open, and interesting. If you are interested in getting involed, please email [email protected] !

DM us Bluesky, Instagram, checkout our github, or email [email protected] !