Platform Policies
Architecture shapes behavior. The way a platform is built determines how its community behaves — what's rewarded, what's possible, and what kind of conversations take place. These policies are deliberate design decisions, not limitations.
What YouWho is for
YouWho is built for close networks of people who already know each other. A place to hear updates about your friends' and family's path through life, to speak civilly, and to plan events together.
It is not a platform for performing, aggregating likes or followers, or trolling strangers' political views. YouWho is not trying to maximize engagement. These policies exist to protect that intent.
Current policies
These architectural decisions are open to revision as the community evolves.
Maximum 150 friends
Research on human social capacity (Dunbar's number) suggests that ~150 is the upper bound for meaningful relationships. By capping friend connections at 150, YouWho encourages members to be intentional about who they connect with. This isn't a broadcast channel — it's your inner circle.
Maximum 3 posts per day
Three posts per day is enough to share what matters without flooding your friends' feed. This limit discourages compulsive posting and keeps updates meaningful. Quality over quantity — say something worth reading, and your friends will actually read it.
Friends-only feed
You only see updates from people you've explicitly connected with — not trending content, not suggestions, not the wider community. There is no global feed, no discovery algorithm, and no way for a stranger's post to appear in your view. Your feed is your circle, nothing more.
Invitation-only membership
Every new member joins through an invitation from someone already on the platform, and each member has a limited number of invitations. This ensures that the community grows through real-world trust, not open registration. If you're here, someone who cares about this space vouched for you.
Limited friend discovery
Finding potential friends on YouWho is intentionally constrained. You can only discover other members through a recommendation from a mutual friend, or by searching for someone by name and city within a second-degree pool (friends of friends). There is no open member directory and no way to browse the full community. You connect with people you already know, through people you already trust.
Manual admin approval
Every membership request is reviewed and approved by a YouWho admin before the account becomes active. This manual step ensures that only genuine people join the platform, keeping out bots, spam accounts, and bad actors. It's a deliberate choice to prioritize quality over speed of growth.
Limited invitations
Each member receives 10 invitations per week, up to a maximum of 50 total. Unused invitations accumulate from week to week. These limits are designed to control the pace of growth and prevent artificial or mass account creation. By growing through real human connections at a measured pace, we keep the community authentic and trustworthy.
A note on these policies
These are architectural decisions, not dogma. As the YouWho community grows and evolves, so may these policies. The goal is always the same: a space that serves the people in it, not the other way around. If a policy isn't working, we'll change it. If it is, we'll keep it. The community comes first.