Social media was supposed to bring us closer.

Somewhere along the way, it stopped being about people. We're building a place that puts that right.

Your peopleNewest first

Priya Nair· 2m

We had the baby! Photos soon.

Ama Mensah· 18m

Kiln opened this morning. Three cracked, nine perfect.

Tomás Ruiz· 1h

Council vote tonight. Quotes from me only count if they come from this account.

Jin Kim· 3h

Finally finished the bookshelf. It only took four weekends.

You're all caught up

Ama Mensah

@amamakes · Ceramics · Accra

Wheel-thrown stoneware. Studio open Saturdays.

FollowMessage

People and posts shown are illustrative.

Something broke along the way.

Open any social app today. Many of the accounts aren't people. AI-generated posts flood your timeline. The algorithm decides what you see, and it optimizes for outrage, not connection. Meanwhile, the company behind it tracks every tap, every scroll, and rents that portrait of you to whoever pays the most.

You didn't sign up for that. Nobody did. The promise was simple: stay in touch with the people you care about. That promise got buried under ads, bots, and engagement tricks.

For you

It isn't broken by accident.

Free apps earn their money from advertisers. The longer you scroll, the more they earn, so the feed is built to hold your attention, not to show you your friends. Fake accounts make the numbers look bigger, so nobody is in a hurry to clear them out. The biggest platforms can't fix this without breaking their own business, and that's a business we don't have.

A free social app

Who pays: Advertisers
What they sell: Your attention
Your feed is tuned for: Time spent
Fake accounts: Good for the numbers

Seal Social

Who pays: You, a few dollars a year
What they sell: The membership itself
Your feed is tuned for: The order posts were shared
Fake accounts: Can't get in

So we started over, with three rules.

1
Every account is a real person.
Everyone verifies a government ID once, at signup, and one person gets one account. Bot farms can't sign up in bulk, nobody else can be verified as you, and someone you block can't come back under a new name.
This mark means a verified human.
2
Your feed is only the people you chose.
Posts from people you follow, in the order they were shared. No suggested posts, no recommended rage-bait. You see what your people are up to, then get on with your day.
You're all caught up
3
You pay, so you're the customer.
A small yearly fee pays for the servers, the security and the ID checks. No ads, and your data isn't for sale to anyone. It also makes fake accounts expensive to run.
$19 a year per household

On day one

A page that proves it's you.

Before your friends arrive, you get a home on the internet that nobody can fake. Your work, your links and your posts, on a page you design from templates. Anyone can read it without an account, and the mark next to your name tells every visitor a real person is behind it.

seal.social/@amamakes

Ama Mensah

@amamakes · Ceramics · Accra

Wheel-thrown stoneware. Studio open Saturdays. Commissions by message only.

Shop the spring firing
Studio hours
Commission a piece

Illustrative profile. Photos are placeholders.

Anish Wagle, smiling, in front of forested hills in Nepal

Who's building this

I missed what social media used to be.

A place to share photos with family. To catch up with old friends. To talk to a small circle of people who actually matter, without wondering if any of them are bots.

I'm Anish, a computer engineer. After six years in the corporate world I moved back to my hometown in Nepal. I don't know yet whether one small team can build the fix, so I'm finding out in public on my YouTube channel, Prayogsala, including the parts that don't work.

Watch the story so farAnish Wagle · Founder

Privacy

We check your ID once, then let it go.

A specialist identity verification provider runs the check. We never receive the photos, and we ask the provider to delete them as soon as the check is done.

What we keep

Your real name
Your country
Your birth year
One-way fingerprints of your ID number and of your name and birth date, which can't be turned back into either

What we never keep

Photos of your ID
Your selfie and video
Your document number

Pricing

A small fee keeps it honest.

One price for your whole household, and we show you where every dollar goes. Reading public pages and posts is free, no account needed.

Household membership

$19 / year

Up to 5 people, each one verified. That's $3.80 a person for the year.

Your family in one private place, on any phone
Shared albums: 25 GB of full-quality photos and video, kept as long as you're a member
Only verified people can reach you, so no one can pose as your family
Messages, and voice and video calls when the phone apps arrive
A verified page for every member

Founding households pay $9 a year, locked in for as long as you stay. First 500 households only. The first 100 places go to our invited testers.

Where your $19 goes

Payment processing: $1.20
ID checks for 5 people (first year): $1.65
Photo storage and calls: up to $6.00
Servers and email: $0.85
Building and running Seal Social: the rest

Money from ads or selling your data$0

Our estimates for a household that uses all its storage, once we have 1,000 households. We'll publish the real numbers once we're running.

For comparison: a paid checkmark on the big platforms costs $8 to $15 a month, for one account, on a network that still lets the bots in. (Prices checked October 2026.)

Common questions

Do I have to show my real name?

Yes. Your verified name shows on your profile, next to a username you pick. That's how everyone knows who they're talking to. If you need to stay anonymous, Seal Social isn't the right place, and we'd rather say so now.

Who checks my ID?

A specialist identity verification provider runs the check. We never receive the photos of your document or your face, and we ask the provider to delete them as soon as the check is done. We keep only what's listed above.

What stops someone making a second account?

The one-way fingerprint of your ID. If the same document is used again, the new account is stopped. That's also why a block is permanent.

Do I need an account to read?

No. Public profiles and public posts are free for anyone to read, and search engines can find them. You need a membership to post, follow, comment and message.

Can I leave and take my things with me?

Yes. Download everything you've posted and delete your account whenever you want. We keep only what the law requires, such as payment records.

When does it open?

We're building it now and won't guess a date. Join the founding list and we'll email you when places open. The first 100 places go to our invited testers, and the next 500 households pay $9 a year, locked in.

Help us put it right.

Join the founding list. The first 500 households pay $9 a year for up to 5 people, locked in for as long as they stay.