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feat(river): orient hero around Signal/WhatsApp familiarity; nonprofit trust strip#64

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sanity merged 1 commit into
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feat/river-hero-signal-whatsapp
Jul 4, 2026
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feat(river): orient hero around Signal/WhatsApp familiarity; nonprofit trust strip#64
sanity merged 1 commit into
mainfrom
feat/river-hero-signal-whatsapp

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@sanity sanity commented Jul 4, 2026

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Problem

The /river landing page led with a "no company in the middle" contrast but didn't leverage the thing new users already know. Steven feedback: orient River in the positive category of global familiarity (Signal / WhatsApp) so newcomers have a mental anchor — without overclaiming encryption parity (Signal's double-ratchet forward/backward secrecy is real and River doesn't match it; claiming "privacy of Signal" would invite a pedantic nerd-debate and would be dishonest).

Approach

Differentiate on architecture and control, never on encryption:

  • Hero now leads with familiarity: "Group chat you already know. / Without the company in the middle." Subhead references Signal/WhatsApp, then pivots to Freenet ("a global network nobody controls"). New punch line: "No account. No phone number. No one in the middle. Just you." (The old "no account, no phone number" reassure tick was folded into the punch line.)
  • Comparison reframed onto one honest axis — everyone else runs on servers someone controls. Names WhatsApp and Signal, credits their encryption, and stays fair to Signal (credited as a nonprofit — Signal Foundation is a 501(c)(3) — not "a company"). The section intro carries the structural argument ("any single operator can be pressured … it doesn't take bad intent, just one point everyone has to trust"), so the Signal row stays short and factual. Nostr and Briar/Tox rows dropped to keep the servers-control message clean.
  • Trust strip added: "Built by a nonprofit, not an ad company" — Freenet Project Inc, a 501(c)(3). Framed on motive (no ads, no investors, no business that runs on your data), not on data-collection, to stay consistent with the page's alpha/telemetry disclosure.
  • CSS: .rv-h1-2 (smaller 2nd H1 line), .rv-punch, .rv-trust*; .rv-sub measure widened 36ch→44ch.

Testing

  • hugo build clean; rendered /river/index.html verified to contain all new copy and none of the replaced copy.
  • Copy reviewed word-by-word by Ian, plus ChatGPT and Grok on earlier rounds.
  • Review pass on this diff: Codex (external) — clean, no functional/build/maintainability issues. Adversarial Claude read — no BLOCKER/SHOULD-FIX; verified no orphan CSS classes, all var() tokens resolve, dark-mode tokens remapped, HTML/section nesting balanced, no overflow risk, template partials intact. Two copy NITs, both dismissed with justification (standard P2P "no servers" phrasing; deliberate no-encryption-parity design).

Copy-only change to two Hugo templates (HTML + scoped CSS). No logic, no wire format, no high-risk surface.

[AI-assisted - Claude]

…t trust strip

Steven feedback: orient River in the positive category of global
familiarity (Signal/WhatsApp) rather than only "why not them", without
overclaiming encryption parity.

- Hero: lead with "Group chat you already know / Without the company in
  the middle"; subhead references Signal/WhatsApp familiarity; add punch
  line "No account. No phone number. No one in the middle. Just you."
- Comparison: reframe axis to "everyone else runs on servers someone
  controls"; name WhatsApp + Signal fairly (credit their encryption, no
  privacy overclaim), Signal credited as a nonprofit; drop Nostr and
  Briar/Tox rows to keep the servers-control message clean
- Add "Built by a nonprofit, not an ad company" trust strip (Freenet
  Project Inc, 501(c)(3))
- CSS: .rv-h1-2 (smaller 2nd H1 line), .rv-punch, .rv-trust*

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Q5nGtN2vVKqYABT5sosrAB
@sanity sanity merged commit 20d16d5 into main Jul 4, 2026
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@sanity sanity deleted the feat/river-hero-signal-whatsapp branch July 4, 2026 14:38
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