Frequently Asked Questions

The Symbiosis app launch date will not be publicized until shortly before the launch. Thank you for your interest! We will announce beta testing soon.

Yes! We are currently planning to have the Symbiosis app support iOS versions 17 and later.

Symbiosis will support Android, but it may come some months after the iPhone release. We initially started developing a cross-platform app to support both iOS and Android upon launch. However, we switched technology stacks to a native approach because we wanted the app experience to be the best quality. In order to save on costs and time to launch, we decided to develop mostly for one platform at a time. Choosing iOS made the most sense for our initial markets. We expect that our Android customers will have a better initial experience than our iOS customers due to a larger network, improved services, and fixed bugs.

We intend to launch a web version of Symbiosis eventually. It will likely have functionality that is noticably different than that of the mobile app versions. We do not intend to comment on it much more than that until shortly before launch or for UX research and testing purposes.

The Symbiosis app is mostly not a social media app, nor does it aspire to be one. However, we believe some media makes for a better app experience. For instance, profiles may feature a limited number of multimedia items to help people identify and express themselves. Multimedia files may also be exchanged via chat, posted in groups, or included in information for gatherings. The priorities of Symbiosis are to help people cultivate relationships, to improve mental health, and to nurture community. We believe those priorities are best achieved by people connecting in-person, not by commenting on social media posts.

Yes. The Symbiosis app is designed to facilitate cultivating relationships. Unlike some social networking apps, Symbiosis is specifically designed to try to both form and, more importantly, improve relationships.

The Symbiosis app is primarily focused on friendship. However there are features that daters might find useful for dating. Also, there are features that will help people already in relationships improve their relationships.

We have strict policies against sexual harassment and guidelines against interacting with people solely for sexual or romantic purposes.

If you are interested in dating, please consider befriending people first. Friendship is a good and common first step prior to dating. Also, many romantic partners are introduced through mutual friends. Friendship is typically an essential component of satisfactory social health; it should not be neglected. Will you commit to treating Symbiosis primarily as a community for making friends and being respectful to everyone?

Whether or not the Symbiosis app is a health app may depend on the definition used.

The app does not share personal information with health care providers or provide other services that (to the best of our knowledge) would require regulation enforcement by healthcare laws such as the United States' HIPAA or agencies such as the FDA. We will investigate health-related compliance requirements as we expand operations to new markets and new features. As we grow, we would like to find ways to collaborate more with healthcare systems and researchers while respecting the privacy of our community members. Any changes that may impact the data that we share, report, or collect will be communicated to the email addresses on file for our community members and in our updated Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

The Apple App Store asks app providers to categorize their apps. The Symbiosis app is primarily a Social Networking app. We may choose a second category. We are evaluating whether Health & Fitness or Lifestyle is more appropriate as a secondary category.

The Symbiosis app will utilize a tiered freemium subscription model and consumable in-app purchases. If you want to use Symbiosis for free, you can! However, it's a premium app with a mission critical to societal and personal wellbeing.

If you want to support Symbiosis Applications, PBC, you will be able to sign up for our Supporter tier, which helps fund the development of the app and additional programs related to our mission. Empowered with this tier, you'll get access to our most premium tools and be able to join a community of supporters with access to special perks.

The Standard tier provides some premium tools and more AI and improved limitations compared to the Seed tier.

The Seed tier is our base paid tier. Meant to be affordably priced to anyone, this tier unlocks some AI features and raises limits from the free Basic tier.

On the Basic tier, you can still use most of the app's features, but you'll miss out on some of the premium features, like AI-assisted tools and recommendations.

We may eventually introduce other revenue models. While we may introduce ads in ways that produce value for consumers, we have no intention of selling personal data or sharing personal data with unauthorized parties. If we add ads, we will be transparent with how they are selected and how your data is used. Like all of our decisions and services, any ads or other sources of revenue will have to be evaluated through our principles.

The Symbiosis app will encrypt all personal data at rest server-side and in transit, so it shouldn't be easily observed, even in the event of a hack. We also have formal policies internally to minimize unauthorized access to personal data.

You are responsible for the information that you share with other people. For example, Symbiosis Applications, PBC is not responsible for consequences if you post your personal information in your profile, chat messages, or anywhere else on the Symbiosis services and it is viewed or shared by somebody whom you have explicitly or indirectly permitted to access the information. We will provide information on responsible disclosure of personal data and tools to protect privacy. You may adjust your privacy settings in your profile and in other privacy settings throughout the app.

The Symbiosis app will provide means to delete some data. Due to processing needs, some types of deleted data will be preserved on our servers if we have a legal basis. If you want us to remove other types of data or to fully delete your personal data, please email us at [email protected] to open a case.

We are trying to achieve known compliance requirements, such as GDPR. If you are interested in our compliance status with various laws, please refer to our website's Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy and the Symbiosis app's Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, which will be made available prior to launch. If you are aware of compliance requirements of any type that you believe we may not be considering, please contact us at [email protected] with your concerns.

More information will be available in the Symbiosis app's Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.

For now, only people 18 and older will be allowed to use the Symbiosis app. This is to protect minors. We may eventually create separate apps or services for younger audiences designed for their needs.

There is a worsening youth mental health crisis. Younger children may be affected, but problems are especially increasing in teens and young adults. If you regularly interact with children and teens, please make a continual effort to learn about general mental health, specific mental health conditions, diagnoses, treatment options, how to communicate about mental health, how to find mental health resources, and how to care for the mental health needs of youth. Whether you are a youth yourself or an adult, you may play a critical role in caring for the mental health needs of others during a time when they are undergoing substantial changes. We intend to post resources for learning more about social health, mental health, and community in the near future. We want some of this content to be focused on youth. Please check back soon if you are interested in learning more.

We will own that we are currently virtue signalling, but we do so as a self-benefitting means to an altrustic end. We believe we are not grandstanding, but we will leave that for you to decide for yourself. Our priorities are to promote the betterment of social health, mental health, and community as well as to produce positive impacts to society and the environment, taken as a whole. We believe that we can make more positive impact if we have public praise and acknowledgment for our values. Public praise and press would help raise awareness of our efforts. With raised awareness, more people might improve their social lives through our app. More people might get informed with impactful content. More talented people interested in making impact might want to work with us. In short, the business might be stronger with more capability for impact than if we were to operate in relative silence. We also believe that increasing awareness in our mission and values will result in a self-fulfilling prophecy because it will encourage us to hold ourselves more accountable and because it will encourage the public to hold us more accountable.

In all honesty, we believe that we do not yet deserve much of your trust or public praise because we are only just getting started. As of the publication of this in summer 2024, our impact has been negligble. We expect that some people will think of us as hypocrites for not delivering on impact before positioning our company so publicly as a mission-driven company. We hope to earn the removal of that label soon.

While we want to spread our mission and values, we want to do so generously and honestly. For an example of how we wish to operate generously, we want to promote other organizations who align with our values and mission. For examples of how we wish to operate honestly, we intend to be more transparent than required and admit areas where we could improve.

Once we start publishing impactful content and rendering services, please inform us if you think we are not living up to these ideals by sending us an email to [email protected].