Community Guidelines

What Friends Ahoy Actually Is

Friends Ahoy is a tool, not a social network. There is no feed, no profile to maintain, no messaging, no forum, and no way for anyone here to contact you. You take the Connection Profile, you get a reading and something to try, and you go live your life.

That means most of what you would expect from a community policy does not apply, because the thing it would govern does not exist. What follows is the short version: how we treat you, how we ask you to treat us, and what to keep in mind when something here sends you out into the world.

The Foundation

Everything here is built on one idea: people deserve to feel seen, heard, and valued. These guidelines apply everywhere Friends Ahoy shows up, on this website, in the Connection Profile, and in anything you send us.

This is a space for friendship. Not dating, not networking, not selling anything. It is also for adults, so you need to be 18 or older to use it. Nothing here will quietly try to be something else.

You Decide What to Share

Everyone opens up at a different speed. Some people take months. Both are fine, and the Connection Profile works either way.

Every free-text question is optional. You can skip all of them and still get your full reading. A nickname works fine on the results page, and you never have to tell us your real name. There is no completion score, no streak, and nothing here that will nudge you into saying more than you meant to.

What You Tell Us

People write real things in those boxes. We treat that seriously.

Your answers are scored in your browser. What you write is stored without an account attached to it, it is never sold, and nobody outside Friends Ahoy sees your individual answers. We look at overall patterns across everyone who takes it, and anything we ever publish is counts and trends, never anything you wrote. The full detail is in our Privacy Policy.

About the Loneliness Questions

Nine of the questions come from two loneliness scales that researchers use: the UCLA 3-Item Loneliness Scale (Hughes, Waite, Hawkley and Cacioppo, 2004) and the De Jong Gierveld 6-Item Loneliness Scale (De Jong Gierveld and Van Tilburg, 2006). They are here for one reason: they are how we can tell whether things actually get better for people, which is what a funder will ask us to prove.

Two things we hold to. It is not a diagnosis, and we are not affiliated with or endorsed by the people who wrote those scales. And you are never shown a loneliness score, because a number like that handed to someone on a hard day does more harm than good. Nobody else is shown yours either.

To be straight rather than sound better than we are: those answers are not sealed off from your reading. Like everything else you answered, they help decide which season of friendship it describes and which parts of it come up. The line we hold is that no number, label, or category is ever put in front of you.

If Someone Shares Their Result With You

You can send your Connection Profile to a friend, and people do. If someone shares theirs with you, that is theirs, not yours to pass on. Do not repost it, screenshot it into a group chat, or use what it says about them as material later. Someone handing you an honest read on their own friendships is trusting you with something. Treat it that way.

When You Write to Us

Suggestions, questions, Island ideas, and partnership notes all land in a real inbox that a person reads. Treat that person the way you would want to be treated. That means no harassment, no slurs or dehumanizing language, no discrimination of any kind, and no using the suggestion box to advertise something.

We will not always write back, and we will not always build what you suggest. Both of those are normal and neither is a slight.

Islands, and Going Out Into the World

Each Island is a page we wrote about one interest: why that interest tends not to produce friendships, and what to change about how you already do it. They are not listings and not a directory. They do not sign you up for anything, and they do not send you to any particular group, venue, or event. Friends Ahoy does not introduce you to anyone.

What they are meant to do is get you doing something with actual people, in your own life, on your own terms. So the ordinary sensible things apply, and they are worth saying out loud:

• Meet in a public place the first few times.
• Tell someone you trust where you are going.
• Arrange your own way there and your own way home.
• Trust your instincts. If something feels off, leave.
• You are never obligated to continue a friendship that does not feel right. "No thanks" is a complete sentence.

What We Do Not Tolerate

If Something Here Is Hard to Use

This site is not yet fully usable by keyboard alone or with a screen reader, and we are working on it. We are saying so out loud because the people most likely to need what Friends Ahoy does are among the people most likely to be locked out of it.

If something here does not work for you, email connect@friendsahoy.com and say what broke. It goes to the top of the list.

Reporting a Concern

If something on this site is wrong, harmful, or makes you uncomfortable, email connect@friendsahoy.com. We take every report seriously, we will listen, and we will tell you what we did. Reporting is confidential.

Being straight with you about the limits: we can act on what we control, which is this site, what we publish, and who we correspond with. Depending on what happened, that can mean replying and sorting it out, declining to respond further and blocking an address, removing a suggestion, correcting or taking down something we published, or reporting the matter to the appropriate authorities. Safety comes before the comfort of whoever is causing harm, every time.

What we cannot do is mediate something that happened somewhere we do not operate. There is also no membership to revoke here, because there is no membership.

If You or Someone You Know Is in Crisis

Friends Ahoy is not a crisis service, and it is not therapy. If you or someone you know is having a hard time, these people are trained for it and available right now:

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 (available 24/7)
Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
SAMHSA National Helpline: 1-800-662-4357 (free, confidential, 24/7)
211: Call 211 for local help of any kind, whether or not it feels like an emergency

Reaching out is a reasonable thing to do, and you would not be the first.

A Note From the Founder

This page is the plain version of how we behave and what we ask of you. The binding version, including liability and intellectual property, is in our Terms of Service.