[Be The Good] Does your community want a chat room on Muni?

We need more people leaving the 'old' enshittified internet, and choosing better alternatives

AT A GLANCE

• Muni is a tab in the Rappler app designed for groups and communities who value facts and real connection.
• Muni chat rooms feature tools for community building such as message pinning, threading, and integrated YouTube video sharing.
• Newsrooms, advocacy organizations, and civil society groups are encouraged to open a chat room in Muni for better online interaction.

This is AI-generated. Read the article for full context. Report any errors.

Hello!

You’re probably a member of many online groups already. Perhaps your family has a Viber group where you all like to share photos of get-togethers. Maybe you stay in touch with your high school friends on Telegram, or manage a small book club on Facebook Messenger. 

I’m the same. I message various friends, family, and work groups on different messaging platforms. What do most of these platforms have in common? They’re managed by large tech companies which are also heavily invested in algorithms we don’t understand, and AI models that tend to exploit many different communities – from independent artists, to rural villages now occupied by massive AI data centers.

What if I tell you that there are chat rooms inside the Rappler app? What if I told you that we’re offering this chat room space, for free, for groups and communities who value facts and real connection? 

Your group could have your own chat room, alongside chat rooms managed by Rappler staff and partners, inside Muni, our space for chat rooms that value facts and information, above virality and profit.

If you’re a subscriber to this Be The Good newsletter, you’re already likely to be the perfect candidate for this. You might be someone who leads, or is active in, groups that value high-quality information, and easy access to news developments and mission-driven work. 

What do you get from having a Muni chat room?

• If your goal is to widen your community’s reach, you can choose to have a public chat room that anyone with an email address can join and send messages to.
• If your goal is internal communications with your community, you can have a private chat room where you control the membership.
• Muni chat rooms have great community-building features: pinning messages (for announcements or reminders), threading (for more organized communications), notifications (so everyone knows when there’s an important update).
• Unique chat room features: you can play YouTube videos inside the chat room, so your members don’t need to hop from app to app. Message, and watch, all in the same space.
• Quick access to topnotch information. Journalists, civil society groups, and experts are just another chat room away. You can even request for specific types of Rappler stories to be automatically sent to your chat room, depending on the interests or goals of your community.
• Your chat room can exist on your own website. Apart from your chat room being accessible through the Rappler app, you’ll be able to make your chat room visible on your community’s own website, similar to how Philippine news outlets Daily Guardian and SunStar Cebu have their MUNI chat rooms in their websites.

Groups that we think would benefit from having a Muni chat room include other newsrooms (including student-run publications), advocacy groups, hobby-based groups, civil society groups with lots of public events and initiatives, and public interest institutions who want new initiatives and ideas to reach a broader group.

If you’re interested in a Muni chat room for your community, let me know! You can also email community@rappler.com.

We’ll invite you to an exploratory meeting about Muni and how your network or group can benefit from it.

We created Muni because we believe no one should be forced to settle for an internet full of AI slop, disinformation, and exploitative algorithms. We believe there’s another way online. But for this vision to become reality, we need more people leaving the “old” enshittified internet, and choosing better alternatives. (READ: Maria Ressa: Journalists need to build, own technology to protect information integrity)

Muni is that alternative. We hope you can explore it with us!

– Rappler.com

Be the Good is a newsletter that comes out every other Wednesday. We deliver updates straight to your inbox on how journalism and communities can work together for impact.

To subscribe, follow the #FactsFirstPH movement or visit rappler.com/newsletters.