Pro-Democracy Advocates Launch Sez Us, a New Reputation-Based Social Media Platform to Create a Civil and Trustworthy Social Environment

BEAVERTON, Ore., March 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- A free society is built upon the foundation of trust and today Sez Us, a new social media platform, is being launched to build this trust within a respectful community by empowering people to interact respectfully and authentically engage with each other. An unabashedly pro-democracy social network, Sez Us is built on a first-of-its-kind reputation engine prioritizing respectful communication, with organic, automatic content moderation, and with an interoperable backbone empowering users to own and port their identity and content around the social sphere as they see fit.

The result is a markedly different social network environment that addresses the growing discontent with the incumbent, top-down networks that spawn civil distrust. Sez Us has developed an innovative social platform that propels civil conversations and rewards respectful conversations between human users, eliminates fake anonymous profiles, and gives members full control of their digital identity, reputation and content.

Joe Trippi, CEO of Sez Us, is a longstanding champion of authentic news, pro-democracy and anti-censorship movements. "What makes Sez Us different is we are a civil place for human beings – not an environment of hate-filled, name calling and angry rhetoric that has been the norm, propagating across incumbent platforms," said Trippi. "Irrespective of your political, personal, religious, social or demographic interests you should be able to have a civil, safe conversation and be treated with dignity and respect. With Sez Us your currency is the reputation you build in the community and your behavior determines your reach.  Bad actors will quickly learn that on Sez Us they have freedom of speech, but no guarantee of freedom of reach," Trippi explains. "Unlike other platforms the Sez Us reputation engine truly allows the user base to own its conversations by only elevating civil, rational and respectful discussions. Users can choose who and what content they want to see or avoid." 

Unlike the majority of social platforms where algorithms are designed to amplify negative content and incentivize users who engage using antagonistic commentary to attract massive attention, Sez Us encourages quality behavior that is civil and authentic. Engagement means members interact and rate posts which increases or decreases the poster's reputation score as well as their own. Discussion posts are bound to user-generated ratings, which cause a post to rise when it earns more points and sink when scored poorly, without interference from algorithmic manipulation or surreptitious bots. The reputation engine empowers users' control and moderation of the content tone, removes the strife and toxicity caused by trolls taking over content tenor, and instead enables fair and thoughtful discussions or civilized debate so necessary to building trust in a free and democratic society.

Yevgeny Simkin, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Sez Us previously built SamizdatOnline.org, an anti-censorship platform that allows citizens in autocratic regimes to easily read and share information published by banned organizations and individuals, without being tracked. "This was an incredibly critical channel to give life to pro-democracy information seekers. Likewise, with Sez Us, I see an opportunity to create an environment that enables diverse groups of people to have discussions about important topics where they can debate and shape ideas respectfully," Simkin explains.

Designed for interoperability, Sez Us is working towards giving users basic control of digital identity that empowers them to transfer data, identity and content between platforms using Frequency, an implementation of the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP). By leveraging DSNP, Sez Us aligns itself with the support of key organizations committed to open, democratic social networks such as Project Liberty, a movement that aims to help people take back control of their lives in the digital age. Project Liberty is a key partner in developing Frequency, a digital infrastructure layer powering a new generation of social networks. "We see Frequency as the future of social interoperability. It gives individuals, agency over their data and digital identity," said Tomicah Tillemann, President of Project Liberty. "Innovative partners including Sez Us, MeWe, WeAre8, and Soar AI are using Frequency to disrupt the status quo of social platforms today."

A key principle of Sez Us is digital self-determination. Members have lifetime ownership of their profile, content and browsing data, none of which will be shared or sold to third parties for any reason without explicit consent. Members can set filters and preferences for what types of content they want to see and these preferences and browsing history are not stored on the platform, therefore cannot be scraped or sold as is commonly done across the majority of platforms today. Additionally, members have the ability to port their reputational data and content to other sites and groups for maximal reach and targeted engagement. The Sez Us approach to personally identifiable information (PII) differs drastically from the stranglehold today's platforms have – nothing is held other than a member's mobile number which is anonymously tokenized.

At release Sez Us has about 10,000 users with a notable set of key investors and advisors, including: 

• Richard A. Gephardt, Co-chair - Council for Responsible Social Media, former U.S. congressman for Missouri
• Stephanie Schriock, CEO & Organizational Leader, Political Strategist, Former President of Emily's List
• General Wesley K. Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander
• Samira Rafaela, Former Member of European Parliament; Visiting Fellow, Cornell University Global Labor Institute
• Reed Galen, a Co-founder of the Lincoln Project
• Adam Kinzinger, political commentator for CNN, former U.S. house representative for Illinois
• Jake Weatherly, Founder and former CEO, SheerID, pioneer of identity verification for commerce
• Page Gardner, Founder, Voter Participation Center; Founder, Innovating for the Public Good: R&D for Democracy

Sez is available in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

About Sez Us:

Sez Us is a better social media experience -- post content, hear from leading voices, and explore communities. As your positive reputation grows, so does your reach and influence.

Democracy demands community and authentic conversation, and with this declaration, we commit to a future where social media empowers users, fosters genuine connection, and upholds the highest standards of reputation and trust.

We, united in the pursuit of a free, open, and equitable digital community, do hereby declare our independence from the centralized control of social media giants and dedicate ourselves to joining a social media movement of, by, and for the people, in order to secure our democracy. Read our full declaration here.

For more information, visit Sez.Us or send a message to [email protected].

Press inquiries should be sent to [email protected]

SOURCE Sez Us