FAQ

Frequently asked questions

1. What is Airchat?
2. Are messages end-to-end encrypted?
3. How is Airchat moderated?
4. What happens when I block someone?
5. What happens when I hide someone?
6. What are the powers of the Host and the Moderators?

What is Airchat?

Airchat is a push-to-talk, voice-first group messenger with perfect transcripts.

Are messages end-to-end encrypted?

Users can enable message encryption in their private rooms. In a room with message encryption turned on, each message is encrypted end-to-end: it’s encrypted on the sender’s device and can only be decrypted by the recipient ensuring the privacy and security of the communication. A brief description of our encryption model follows:

We follow a hybrid encryption model. Initially, we generate a pair of asynchronous encryption keys on the client-side. The private key is stored within the device’s Keychain, while the public key is stored on our servers. For each message that’s sent, a unique symmetric AES-128 key (a message key) is generated. This key is used to encrypt the actual content of the message. The generated message key is then encrypted asymmetrically using the private key from the sender’s Keychain and the public keys of the other participants. This encrypted message key is attached to the message before it is sent. Upon receiving the message, the recipients can decrypt the message key using their respective private keys that correspond to the public keys used for encryption. Once the message key is decrypted, it can be used to decrypt the actual message content. The encrypted content of the messages is persistently stored on our servers.

How is Airchat moderated?

Airchat has a self-moderation policy: users have powerful tools to fully moderate behavior on their content – tools that normally other platforms reserve for themselves. You don’t need to appeal to us as you can remove offending content yourself! You can delete, hide, and block troublemakers. We don’t remove people platform-wide for polite disagreement, or over politics, but we do remove people for harassment, impersonation, foul behavior, and illegal content.

What happens when I block someone?

Users can block accounts on the platform they don’t like. Blocking a user prevents the user from seeing or interacting with any of your content. When you block a user:

• The user cannot see any room hosted by you in its entirety.
• The user is removed from any of your rooms they might have previously been a speaker in.
• The user cannot see any chit or comment posted by you in any other room.

What happens when I hide someone?

Hide in Airchat is more powerful than Mute on other platforms. It hides the hidden user’s activities in rooms and under chits that you control. Users can hide accounts on the platform they don’t wish to interact with. Hiding a user hides the user’s interactions with your content. When you hide a user:

• The user can see and interact with your content but their interactions won’t appear to anyone on the app except themselves.
• The user is hidden from all your rooms—any comment the user posts in your room is hidden for everyone in that room.

What are the powers of the Host and the Moderators?

All the participants in a public room can have either of three roles: the Host, a Moderator, or a Speaker. The Host is the creator of the room. They exercise maximum control over the room. This includes being able to delete any chits or comments by other participants, being able to add or remove speakers, and assign people Moderator roles in their room. The Host can also delete the entire room if they wish. A Moderator has the ability to hide chits by other Speakers in that room. These chits can be viewed by the Host and all the Moderators in the room, but not by the other Speakers. A Speaker can only delete their own chits in a room and comments below their chits.