Approach
Three promises,
and what they cost.
No ads, so far — and here is why that is likely to hold
Not one of these apps has ever carried an ad: not a banner, not an interstitial, not a “rewarded” video. That is a fact about today, not a vow about forever, and it is worth being precise about which one you are reading.
The reason it is likely to hold is structural rather than sentimental. These apps are paid for from inside the app, by people who decide something is worth buying. An app funded that way has to be good enough to pay for. An app funded by advertising has to be sticky enough to sell, and every design decision after that point bends towards holding you longer. Changing the funding would mean changing what the apps are for.
An account only where sharing needs one
Nine of the ten open straight up: no sign-up screen between you and the thing you came for.
Dulle is the exception, and not by accident — it shares a live location with the people you choose, and there is no honest way to do that without an identity on both ends. It asks at the moment it needs to.
Every app page states what that app requires, so you never have to install one to find out.
Stated, not implied
It would be easy to write “your data never leaves your phone.” For most of these apps it is true. It is not true for all of them: Dulle shares live location because that is the entire point of it, and Outpost keeps an anonymous score on a server. One claim you could disprove would poison the ones that are true.
So instead: every app links to its own privacy policy from its page, and the policy says what that particular app stores and where. If something there is unclear, that is a bug — write and say so.
Small on purpose
Ten apps without a team only works if each one stays small enough to hold in your head. That is a limit, not a marketing line: it is why these apps do one thing, and why they get updates long after a bigger studio would have moved on.
If any of this changes
Everything above describes how things work today. Some of it may stop being true — a business that cannot change is a business that ends.
So rather than promise never, here is the commitment that can actually be kept: any change to these three points will be written on this page with the date it changed, and it will appear in the release notes of the app it affects. Nothing will quietly become true one release at a time.
And one thing is not on the table, because it is the point of the whole enterprise: none of these apps will be designed to keep you using them longer than you meant to.