Why is TruthBear open?

25 August 2026 · Ed Parcell

Our mission at TruthBear is to help people understand the world as well as possible. That means two things: We want to make sure that our users' scarce attention is used effectively - that it's assigned to the topics they want to focus on. And that they get the highest quality information on what they care about. We need to make sure we justify the trust that our users put in us to keep them informed.

I decided that TruthBear should be open because being transparent is an important part of what lets you trust us. It's better if people can see that the platforms they use act as they expect, rather than just relying on assurances. So we don't have exclusive control over the TruthBear network or your experience. We want that to be a structural guarantee built into the way TruthBear is designed, rather than a behavior you rely on us continuing voluntarily.

So, architectural commitments bind us - including future versions of us. By making TruthBear open, we ensure that you retain agency over your data, and the algorithms that help determine what might be credible or important to you. Just like with email, with an open protocol and portable data, you can always take your data and use another client or service. As a user you should be comfortable knowing that the TruthBear network may even outlast TruthBear the company.

The other reason to have TruthBear be open is that we want the TruthBear network to become common infrastructure - judgments about what matters, the collection of articles and links, and what people declare they believe. That network becomes more useful the more that people participate in it. So making it open is the best way to maximize participation, and hence maximize utility. You don't need our permission to add to it - the protocol is open and reference implementations are open source.

TruthBear gets stronger when other people and companies participate. Whether it's links to newspapers and other sites that provide information, or third party automated agents monitoring specific topics, or developers writing their own alternative algorithms, we think it all makes TruthBear a more attractive proposition for our users.

It's an old adage that wherever you work, most of the smart people work somewhere else. That's definitely true for a small startup. We think that creating an inclusive open network can let TruthBear scale to become more useful than anything we could build alone. Our incentive is that as well as making the most useful resource, an open network enlarges the eventual opportunity for all of us, TruthBear the company included.

I want to be concrete about what "open" means exactly, and how it connects with the goals I've outlined. TruthBear is designed so that anyone can participate without our permission. It is defined by an open protocol which we hope will become a standard, so anyone can write a client. We provide open source reference libraries and a local desktop client so that third party tooling is practical. And you can freely move your data between services, including self-hosting on your own server or cloud storage. Together, these various forms of openness are intended to ensure that TruthBear allows people and companies to participate as they want to, and that the TruthBear network is not controlled by a centralized gatekeeper.

So then why not open everything? The answer is that openness and commercial development solve different problems. The open platform creates a shared resource, while the commercial product focuses money, talent and incentives to make that raw information genuinely useful. Creating an excellent product will require substantial ongoing research to make the best experience, as well as engineering and operational work to make it robust and reliable. The aim is to give users the best and most efficient way to access the TruthBear network to gain insights and understand the world.

A guarantee that you can self-host creates incentives that are important to ensure the long-term viability of the TruthBear network. But actually self-hosting is work. GitHub and Gmail, for example, show that most users will be happy for someone else to deliver a more powerful service in a convenient package, even when the underlying standards are open.

Ultimately, we are trying to build a platform that helps people become better informed. To work, TruthBear needs you to be able to trust it. So the reason to be as open as we can is this: a system which is fundamentally about trust shouldn't unnecessarily demand trust in itself.

I love hearing your good ideas. If you think something here is unclear or just plain wrong, you can help make TruthBear better by telling me: ed@truthbear.org.