In 2025, the landscape of social media is dominated by content engineered to provoke strong emotional reactions, with sensationalism and inflammatory material often going viral. However, a new application called Sez Us, launched by experienced Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, aims to shift this dynamic by discouraging provocative content aimed solely at inciting reactions.
The introduction of Sez Us comes at a time when America is experiencing a pronounced wave of right-wing extremism influencing global politics. Platforms such as Truth Social and X effectively function as propaganda tools, reframing cultural debates on immigration, diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and transgender rights as threats within the context of former President Trump’s vision for America—a concept reminiscent of past eras. As new social media platforms emerge, they have the potential to address these challenges. Sez Us is positioning itself as a counterbalance to X, potentially paving a new path forward.
Yevgeny Simkin, co-founder and chief product officer of Sez Us, emphasizes the importance of reintroducing responsibility, ownership, and reputation to create a system where incentives align more closely with real-world expectations.
Despite the current landscape where online discussions have morphed into a form of rabid spectacle, platforms like Bluesky have demonstrated a demand for more civil discourse. Instead of promoting posts based on their ability to garner rage clicks, Sez Us incorporates what the developers describe as a “reputation engine.” This feature enables users to evaluate posts by others across five criteria: approval, influence, insightfulness, relevance, and politeness.
On Sez Us, these evaluations contribute to each user’s reputation score and overall visibility. A higher score increases a user’s reach within the community. Users have the ability to control who can respond to their posts, based on the responder’s reputation score. Users with lower scores face limitations on their influence, and while all posts remain visible, the system allows users to block replies from individuals with low approval ratings. The ultimate aim of this rating mechanism is to prioritize substantive engagement over viral moments.
Simkin explains that the platform’s approach is about community feedback over moderator intervention, encouraging users to communicate more politely and reduce bombastic behavior when their submissions are not well-received.
The quest for the ideal moderation strategy in social media has never offered a universal solution, a challenge further complicated as user bases expand. Simkin and his team envisioned creating a platform that represents how social media ought to operate, contrasting it with current practices. The purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk was seen as a catalyst, breaking the presumed status quo and sparking the imagination of what future social media could become.
Since Twitter’s rebranding as X, the platform’s evolution has inspired a surge of innovation among tech developers keen to influence the next era of social media. Sez Us emerged from this environment in 2022, driven by an ambitious objective to restore civility to online discussions.
