by
Tracy Chou
July 26, 2021
Ask about tactics for introducing a new product to the market, and inevitably someone will recommend a waitlist. They might wax poetic about the psychological benefits — cultivating a perception of exclusivity, building hype, activating FOMO — or note the practical value of growing your marketing mailing list before you even have a product to show. But here at Block Party, we launched with a waitlist for a very different reason: safety.
Block Party exists to help build a safer social media experience for everyone. It’s about taking back control, setting your own boundaries, and rediscovering all the joy and value you can gain from your community when the trolls can’t disrupt it.
Unfortunately, the trolls are not quite as enthused about our mission as we are. They’d prefer things stay precisely how they are. And that means they’re actively looking for ways to stop us.
In practice, that means the trolls are constantly looking for new ways to undermine what we’re building, from launching DDOS attacks on our site, spamming our waitlist with abuse, to even creating fake accounts with my name and photo to post abuse.
We’re never willing to compromise user safety for expediency, so we introduced a waitlist with a manual review process to keep our service secure and reliable. But social media safety is an urgent problem. When you’re under attack by trolls, the psychological toll compounds. So today, we’re introducing a faster path to signup—while still maintaining our rigorous safety standards.
When you sign up for Block Party, you’ll be invited to connect your Twitter account. This allows us to automate parts of our review process, and offer many users the opportunity to start using Block Party immediately.
Users that require additional review from our team can expect a response within a few business days. If you urgently need access, you can pay the anti-troll toll. If the toll is beyond your means, you can contact [email protected] with additional details to request an expedited review.
We’re building the tools our team has always needed to stay safe on social media, and thanks to your feedback, we’re gearing up to share even more exciting updates with you soon. If you’d like to accelerate our work, consider inviting a friend to join Block Party, or become a Supporter. Together, we can build a safer social media space for everyone.
