myBackyard

How myBackyard works

A plain-language walkthrough of what this app does and how it's built — no jargon, no fine print you didn't ask for.

The feed

The feed is chronological, not algorithmic — posts show up in the order people made them, newest first. There's no engagement-maximizing ranking deciding what you see.

Posts come in three flavours: sharing a place you visited, asking the neighbourhood a question, or (for organizations) posting an announcement. You can tag a local place and add up to a handful of photos. Posts are voted on Reddit-style — upvote what's worth seeing, downvote what isn't — and the feed can be sorted by New or Popular. Comments open up a conversation underneath the post.

Events & RSVPs

Anyone signed in can host an event — set a time, a place, and a description, and it shows up on the events page. RSVPing marks you as "going" or "interested", and that count is visible to everyone so people can gauge who else is showing up.

Account types

Everyone picks how they show up in the neighbourhood when they join. It shapes your badge and a couple of profile fields, not what you're allowed to do:

  • Local — I live here
  • New Canadian — Just made this home
  • Visitor — Exploring for a while
  • Organization — A local club or business

Friending is mutual (both sides confirm), following an organization is one-directional and instant — no approval needed.

Moderation & no big chains

myBackyard is intentionally about independent, local spots — no big chains, ever. Posts are transparent by design: only the person who wrote a post can ever delete it, including organizations on their own page, so the record of what was said stays honest.

There's no algorithmic curation deciding what's worth seeing — every post from people and places you follow shows up, in order, every time.

What data is stored

Everything lives in a single Supabase project: your profile (name, handle, bio, neighbourhood, photo), the posts, comments, and votes you make, your event RSVPs, and your friend/follow connections. Photos you upload are stored in Supabase Storage under a folder scoped to your account.

Database rules (row-level security) restrict who can write what — you can only ever edit or delete your own posts, comments, votes, and profile. See Connectors for a live status check on that connection.

Post-view measurement. When measurement is enabled and a signed-in person has at least half of a post (or half the viewport for a tall post) visible for a full second, the app records one “view” for that post, that account and that page visit — nothing more granular than that, and nothing for signed-out visitors. Those rows are readable only by the platform owner (a single confirmed account), are scheduled for removal once older than 90 days, and are removed from the application database when you delete your account or the post is deleted. The Privacy Policy has the full wording.

myBackyard