[Be The Good] Does your community want a chat room on Muni? - Rappler

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You’re probably a member of many online groups already. Perhaps your family has a Viber group where you all like to share photos of get-togethers. Maybe you stay in touch with your high school friends on Telegram, or manage a small book club on Facebook Messenger. 

I’m the same. I message various friends, family, and work groups on different messaging platforms. What do most of these platforms have in common? They’re managed by large tech companies which are also heavily invested in algorithms we don’t understand, and AI models that tend to exploit many different communities – from independent artists, to rural villages now occupied by massive AI data centers.

What if I tell you that there are chat rooms inside the Rappler app? What if I told you that we’re offering this chat room space, for free, for groups and communities who value facts and real connection? 

Your group could have your own chat room, alongside chat rooms managed by Rappler staff and partners, inside Muni, our space for chat rooms that value facts and information, above virality and profit.

If you’re a subscriber to this Be The Good newsletter, you’re already likely to be the perfect candidate for this. You might be someone who leads, or is active in, groups that value high-quality information, and easy access to news developments and mission-driven work. 

What do you get from having a Muni chat room?

Groups that we think would benefit from having a Muni chat room include other newsrooms (including student-run publications), advocacy groups, hobby-based groups, civil society groups with lots of public events and initiatives, and public interest institutions who want new initiatives and ideas to reach a broader group.

If you’re interested in a Muni chat room for your community, let me know! You can also email community@rappler.com.

We’ll invite you to an exploratory meeting about Muni and how your network or group can benefit from it.

We created Muni because we believe no one should be forced to settle for an internet full of AI slop, disinformation, and exploitative algorithms. We believe there’s another way online. But for this vision to become reality, we need more people leaving the “old” enshittified internet, and choosing better alternatives. (READ: Maria Ressa: Journalists need to build, own technology to protect information integrity)

Muni is that alternative. We hope you can explore it with us!

Those words are from a Microsoft executive, and they were the subject of a conversation in our Everyday Tech chat room on the Rappler app.

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