Over the weekend, another social media platform exploded into the fray: AirChat. The app is like a combination of Twitter and Clubhouse. Instead of typing a post, you speak it. The app quickly transcribes what you say, and as your followers scroll through their feed, they’ll hear your voice along with the transcription.
Built by AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder executive Brian Norgard, Airchat takes a refreshingly familiar approach to social media. There are people I’ve known online for years, and it wasn’t until following each other on AirChat that I realized I’d never heard their real voices. The platform makes it feel like we’re chatting with each other, but because AirChat is asynchronous, it’s not as scary as walking into a room in the Clubhouse and having live chats with strangers.
Posting with your voice might sound scary, but it’s not as scary as it sounds — you can re-record your post if you misspoke. But if you’re someone who likes to send your friends three-minute voice memos instead of typing (or if you have a podcast), AirChat is intuitive.
AirChat wouldn’t be worth using if the transcriptions were subpar, but it’s the best speech-to-text product I’ve ever used. It almost always hits the mark in English… it even transcribes Pokémon names correctly (yes, I tested it extensively). It also seems to do well in other languages — I found it functional in Spanish, and TechCrunch reporter Ivan Mehta said the app did a decent job transcribing Hindi. Sometimes, the app translates speech directly into English, and while the translations were generally correct in our testing, it’s not clear why or when the app translates instead of transcribing.
So, is AirChat here to stay? This depends on the type of people who can find community on the platform. For now, the stream looks like a coffee shop in San Francisco—most people on the app have some connection to the tech industry, which could be because tech enthusiasts are often the first to use new apps. That wasn’t the case with Threads when it launched (it’s just an extension of Instagram), or even Bluesky, which developed an early culture of absurd memes and disrespect. Right now, the app has paused invites, so this won’t improve in the near future.
The app’s current culture could also be a reflection of its founders, who are influential in Silicon Valley and venture capitalist circles. But it’s telling that when AirChat introduced a channels feature, two of the first to appear were “Crypto” and “e/acc,” which stands for effective accelerationan aggressive pro-technology movement.
This doesn’t have to be an automatic red flag – I (somewhat reluctantly) use Twitter/X every day and the tech industry feels particularly strong there too. But at least on X, my feed also contains posts about my favorite baseball team, the music I like, and the ongoing debate about adding more bike lanes to my neighborhood. So far on AirChat, I haven’t seen many conversations that don’t involve technology in some way.
What I see as a red flag is AirChat’s naive approach to content control.
“We will try to put as much of the monitoring tools in the hands of users as possible. We want to be as open as possible. That being said, sometimes you just don’t have a choice,” Ravikant said on AirChat.
The phrase “hands-off” is reminiscent of Substack, a platform that lost popular releases like Platformer and Garbage Day after refusing to remove pro-Nazi content.
AirChat did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Ravikant argues that AirChat should work like a dinner party — you wouldn’t kick someone out of your house for engaging in a political conversation. But if they start screaming violently at you, it would be wise to intervene.
“We don’t want to mediate content, but we will mediate tone,” Ravikant said.
In real-life social situations, it is very normal behavior to disagree with someone and explain why you think differently. This is a manageable enough situation to handle at your own table. But AirChat is not a normal social situation, as you are chatting with thousands of other people. Without stronger content moderation, this approach is like running a big music festival, but with only one person working security. One would hope that everyone would enjoy the music and behave unsupervised, but it is unrealistic. Just look Woodstock ’99.
This is another way AirChat parallels Clubhouse. Clubhouse’s approach to content moderation was even more permissive, as there was no way to block users for months after launch — AirChat already has block and mute features, thankfully. The Clubhouse has hosted repeatedly instead of simitic and misogynistic conversations without consequences.
With this minimalist approach to content retention, it’s not hard to see how AirChat could land itself in hot water. What happens if someone shares copyrighted audio on the platform? What happens when someone doxes another user or someone uploads CSAM? Without a real plan for navigating these situations, what will happen to AirChat?
I hope people can behave themselves as I think the idea behind AirChat is great, but we can’t be that naive. I would like to know that if the neo-Nazis tried to politely explain to me why Hitler was right, the platform could protect me.
