How it works

Our mission, to increase truth shared in love, requires an unusual corporate and product structure.

Corporate structure

Independence

Fathom is an independent company. It is not affiliated with or authorized by any company, agency, government or organization where it is used, and no organization other than Fathom controls it.

When you share on Fathom, you are using a tool that no other organization can control. Our trust is enforced by architecture rather than by policy: we do not ask you to believe a promise, because the system is built so that the promise cannot be broken.

Our mission depends on keeping that trust, which is why Fathom is built the way it is.

Product structure

Anonymity and filtering

You cannot be identified

• Nothing you do on Fathom carries your name, and once a topic, comment or vote closes, nothing can link it to you, even for us.
• No one at Fathom reads what your team writes. Only a few named engineers can reach our systems at all, and every access is logged.
• Fathom keeps no history of when or how often you use it.
• Your answers are held, with no name attached, only until the report is written, then deleted. The report itself is deleted once it has been read.
• A report is written only once enough people have answered, and never from fewer than three. If too few answer, no report is written and the answers are deleted.
• Our databases keep no record of who gave which answer.
• Recordings go to Google’s government-grade cloud only to be turned into words. Fathom never stores them.
• No one sees who proposed a topic, a member or a removal, or how anyone voted.
• Every notification reads only “Notification,” so your lock screen holds no record of what you did.
• Fathom never confirms whether an email address belongs to an account.

Nothing lasts longer than it needs to

• A report lasts one minute from the moment it is first opened, and is deleted if it is never opened.
• Comments disappear 24 hours after they are posted.
• Dissolving a team deletes everything in it, and every trace that it existed.
• Applications are deleted once reviewed.

Honesty, offered in good faith

• AI filters run on Google’s government-grade cloud. They see your words, never your name. They read what you write before it is shared. If something reads as an attack on a person, could reveal who you are, or shares something sensitive that does not belong in the group, the filter tells you why and suggests a revision.
• What you send is your choice. What reaches the recipient is not: anything the filters judge malicious or harmful is held back from the report. Frankness, anger and praise of a named person all pass.
• Your group sees what is done in the open, such as the comments posted and the topics proposed, but never who did it.
• Your reputation score is one score across all your groups, so a good score reveals nothing about what you have said in any one of them.

Your group governs itself

• Topics go live, members are added or removed, and teams are renamed or dissolved by the group’s own vote. You can leave a team yourself at any time. Fathom does not decide.
• Because these decisions are made collectively, none of them can be traced to any one person.