צרכי ציבור, or אין הציבור יכולין לעמוד בה?

The Tizbbur is debating

There’s been a lot of discussion on JTech about Tzibbur.

Pro Tzibbur, anti Tzibbur, why Tzibbur is doing things the way it is, how it should do things differently, and plenty of misinformation.

I’ve written plenty of my own arguments, some not very complimentary, but more recently, defending Tzibbur from a lot of garbage.

From some private conversations I’ve had with some JTechers, I’ve realized that there are some who think that what I’ve been writing in Tzibbur’s defense is just my opinion, my interpretation of the situation.

I’d therefore like to clarify that most of what I’ve been writing defending Tzibbur I pretty much know for a fact.

A lot of what I’ve been saying about Tzibbur I’ve heard from someone involved with Tzibbur, and have had it confirmed by a few others with connections to kosher phone and filtering companies, and therefore have a clearer picture of what’s going on.

Also, for anyone who’s involved in the kosher tech market and might get upset by anything I say over here, this post is not endorsed or written by Tzibbur.
If you have complaints, make sure not to bother Tzibbur about it.
You can instead send them my way.

The story with tzibbur

For those that haven’t read through the full conversation surrounding this, and might not have seen what I posted, this is basically the story.

In August 2026, GroupMe shut down their SMS feature, leaving tens of thousands of Yidden that relied on it for important chats stuck.
Someone, I’ll call Yehuda (the name Levi was already taken), realized that we have a problem on our hands, and wanted to try to work out a solution. His goal wasn’t to make money; it was to bring a solution for group messaging to kosher phones. He did hope to be able to make a little money from this on the side, but that’s not why he started it, and he didn’t expect to make that much.
He started building his own basic messaging platform.
At the same time, he tried getting kosher phone companies and filtering companies on board.
He pretty quickly got TAG on his side.
TAG didn’t help with building or running this.
It’s not their project.
They did try helping get kosher phone companies and filters on board with this, and very much supported it.
The phone companies themselves were, in theory, pretty easy to win over.
They’re mostly run by baalabatim without too many shitos of their own.
The problems mostly came from the filtering companies and hechsherim.
Some weren’t too excited about allowing a platform that could end up being used for chats that are, at best, just entertainment.
Others didn’t like the idea of group chats at all.
Either way, they pushed Tzibbur to be a lot stricter than they might’ve otherwise been.
Utility chats only.
No modern chat features.
Like I said, I’ve spoken to someone who’s involved in Tzibbur, and while they’re not looking to build a platform that’s a hefkervelt, or just a Jewish WhatsApp, they would definitely be a little less restrictive if not for the pressure from others.

What does this mean?

When I said that if you want to complain, complain to the hechsherim and filtering companies, not Tzibbur, I meant it.
They have a big influence on how Tzibbur is being run.
Stop calling it TAG’s app, TAG is very much involved, but it is not their platform.
Stop kvetching that “Tzibbur doesn’t let news chats, Tzibbur is evil”. They owe you nothing, and they’re not the ones controlling the ecosystem deciding what does and doesn’t go on kosher phones.

Messaging on a flip phone

Stop whining and roll up your sleeves

If we want kosher phones to have better messaging platforms, this is what we have to do:

Build an SDK for building a kosher messaging app.
It would use Delta Chat, Matrix, and Shliach Tzibbur as the backends.
Shliach Tzibbur because Tzibbur is already headed to all kosher phones, Delta because it allows chatting with anyone who uses email, and Matrix because it’s the most modern open messaging platform.
It would support modern chat features, while leaving it up to the phone companies, filtering companies, and hechsherim how strict they want their phones to be, not how strict the entire platform should be.
It would have a built-in intelligent algorithm to tag chats according to how personal the group is, as well as chat topic. Possible tags would include personal, family, friends, acquaintances, strangers, utility, music, sports, etc.
This SDK would offer flags to enable or disable specific features, like reactions and encryption, as well as settings for how personal and utilitarian chats have to be to be allowed. It would also allow choosing which topics would be allowed.
This would allow any kosher phone to choose which standards they want to follow.
Any client can choose to offer parental controls so users can choose to further filter which chats they can be part of.
Again, all scanning would happen locally.
Your chats would be encrypted.

The reason such a system would be better is because it wouldn’t enforce a single standard.
Each phone would be able to have its own.
This can hopefully satisfy both users and some kosher phone companies.

Once we have a mature enough SDK, we would need to spam kosher phone companies with requests to add our solution to their phones.
That means spreading the word: If you care about Tzibbur’s limitations, text your filtering or phone company and demand to allow our solution.

If enough people care and send feedback to their phone or filtering companies, some might decide to allow it.

If even two or three allow it, that would be great.

Right now, this is just me dreaming.

If no one wants to pitch in and it’s just me, then this won’t go anywhere, and I don’t want to hear another complaint about Tzibbur when you could’ve at least tried to do something to make a better alternative.

If people decide to give this a shot, and try to help make this happen, then I’m not saying it will replace Tzibbur, but I think it has a decent chance of being allowed on a few phones in addition to Tzibbur.

Hoping to hear from people ready to step up to the plate and help out with this.