Ephemo — Ephemeral Chat & Private Communities

The social network that chooses to forget.

A free, self-hosted Progressive Web App inspired by MSN, IRC, and early-2000s forums. Messages expire automatically — 10 seconds to 24 hours, on every message and attachment. 1:1 chat, group chat, and small private communities with rooms, presence, and moderation. No feed, no algorithm, no permanent archive.

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What's inside

• Accounts — email sign-up, verification, nickname, avatar, up to 3 interests.
• Friends — mutual requests only. No followers, ever.
• Chat — 1:1 and group. Text, emoji, photos, video, voice, files.
• Disappearing messages — 10s · 30s · 1m · 5m · 1h · 24h, on every message and attachment.
• Pulse — MSN's nudge, reborn. No text, 5-minute cooldown.
• Presence — online / away / busy, with optional visibility.
• Status — one line about you, right now. It expires on its own.
• Communities — public, private, or invite-only. Owner / moderator / member roles.
• Rooms — text-only, configurable lifetime, no history, self-destructing.
• Moderation — reports, timed mutes, kicks, bans.
• Push notifications — never contain the message text.
• Installable PWA — offline shell, light/dark theme, accessible (WCAG AA).

What's not here, by design

Not a gap to fill in a future release: it's the product.

• No feed, no infinite scroll
• No algorithm, no ranking, no people suggestions
• No followers, no likes, no public counters
• No searchable history — there's no message search endpoint
• No backup and no trash — deleted means deleted
• No ads, no invasive analytics, no profiling

Self-hosted · open source · no ads, ever.