A note from the founders on what we believe — and the kind of internet we’re trying to build.
We believe disagreement is a good thing — and that we’ve forgotten how to do it.
Somewhere in the last decade, the internet stopped being a place where people talked with each other and became a place where they perform at each other. We argue in threads no one wins, for an audience that’s already made up its mind. We block the people we disagree with and wonder why the world feels so far apart.
We didn’t build DebateRoom because we think everyone should agree. We built it because we think everyone should be able to disagree — honestly, in person, without losing respect for each other.
Our mission is to make disagreeing with a stranger feel human again.
That means no comment sections and no followers to play to. It means putting two people face to face, on one topic, and trusting that when you can see the person on the other side, you argue like they’re a person. We’re not here to help you win. We’re here to help you understand — and maybe, sometimes, to change your mind.
That’s the internet we want to leave behind us. This is our attempt at building it.
A person is never the thing being argued. You can hold a position we think is wrong and still deserve to be heard without contempt. We design every rule around that line.
Winning an argument online costs nothing and changes no one. Understanding why someone believes what they believe is harder, rarer, and the only thing that actually moves us forward.
The moment there's a crowd, people stop talking to each other and start talking to the crowd. We keep it one-on-one on purpose, so the conversation stays honest.
It's easy to dehumanize a username. It's much harder to dehumanize a face. Live video is the whole point — empathy is a feature, not an afterthought.