Introducing Cabin, the open source, privacy-focused social platform.
Hi there! I’m John Jackson, a product designer of over 15 years, and co-founder of Cabin. I have dedicated my adult life to helping those in need, from volunteering locally as an EMT, to volunteering my expertise in product design to help build digital products that benefit Ukraine, to volunteer search and rescue. I consider myself incredibly lucky; I’ve had the privilege of meeting and interacting with some truly wonderful human beings throughout my work and volunteering…and it’s the people who make those experiences so cherished.
My favorite tool for keeping up with the people has always been social media. I started out as a MySpace kid, but eventually transitioned over to Facebook. Looking back, I feel confident in saying that my social media experience peaked with MySpace. Since then, toxic capitalism has steadily eroded the existing major platforms.
The root problem, in my opinion, is greed.
Platforms earn most of their revenue through ads. This means they’re incentivized to keep users engaged as much as possible to maximize ad views. Some of the real-world consequences of this:
Manipulative algorithms
Platforms use manipulative algorithms to keep users engaged, often elevating the most controversial content as it draws the highest level of engagement among users.
Push notifications
Some platforms use push notifications There’s no end to the push notifications—and to make matters worse, the notifications are often useless. Most of which are completely senseless—are near constant to keep users coming back into the app. There is nothing authentic about being baited back into an app.
Misinformation
Platforms aren’t doing enough to identify, mark, and educate users on misinformation. But as mentioned earlier, controversial posts result in higher engagement, which means most platforms simply don’t care.
Call me delusional, but I believe a better social platform can exist; one that prioritizes people over profit.
Introducing Cabin, the open source, privacy-focused social platform
Cabin is designed to be everything we loved about MySpace, with a modern twist—Cabin is decentralized and built on AT Protocol. We’re launching Cabin in June 2026 under the AGPL v3.0 open source license.
Cabin’s features
I realize not everyone was alive when MySpace was at its peak, which would probably leave you wondering what can be expected from Cabin. Fear not, as I have come prepared with images.
Markdown support, with a thoughtfully-designed editor
We’re making it easy to write (and consume) long-form content by implementing support for markdown. For the less tech savvy folks, markdown is just a lightweight formatting language. You’ll be able to easily embed links, create lists, style text, and plenty more.
Polls, for asking the real questions
Whether you’re trying to prove a point to your spouse or figure out vacation locations for the Fram’s next trip, we’ve got you covered. I’m personally most excited for this feature because it will help us gather important feedback from users.
Share images and videos
Share all the beautiful moments you’ve captured. We’ll scrub the metadata on your media to maintain your privacy. Don’t worry, though, you’ll be able to toggle automatic scrubbing.
Launching June 2026
We’re on track to launch Cabin on iOS, Android, and web this summer, and we can’t wait to share more with you all. We appreciate any support you can give, whether by signing up for early access or spreading the word.
How you can help us
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