The five never-agains
Things the big platforms do — and we refuse. In writing, on this page, forever.
No feed-injection ads.
Local businesses can sponsor named, opt-in placements (a venue's own profile, a clearly-labeled 'Sponsored' card on its city page) — never injected into your feed, never re-ranked into search results, never disguised as recommendations. Organizers pay flat take-rate fees, not for distribution.
No data brokerage.
Your RSVPs, DMs, location, friend graph — never sold, never leased, never shared with advertisers or data brokers.
No precise location tracking.
Presence is neighborhood-level only. Check-ins are opt-in and visible only to mutual friends.
No AI slop discovery.
Curated lanes and editor's picks are hand-selected by local humans. No generative titles, no synthetic venues, no sponsored stuffing.
No dark-pattern fees.
Every line item shown on checkout. We reject drip pricing. Guests pay the ticket price and nothing else; hosts pay 5% + $0.45 a ticket, card processing included, and the pricing page says exactly that.
Privacy architecture
Your data radius shrinks the closer you get to a real person.
Four concentric layers. You control who's in each. Most platforms make you opt out; we make you opt in.
- 1
Public
What everyone on Flock can see- Your first name + initial
- Your city
- Your profile photo (if you upload one)
- 2
Flockmates
People you've been out with who accepted a crew link- Neighborhood-level presence
- Your public RSVPs
- Shared venue history — redacted to 'been here together'
- 3
Crew
Small groups you form explicitly- Who's free now / heading out
- Rally invitations and Split Pay
- Photos shared to the crew memory layer
- 4
Private
You and only you- Draft plans and saved venues
- Full visit history and receipts
- Wrapped stats (shared only if you publish)
Export or delete any layer at any time from Settings. Full data export available in a structured JSON archive within 24 hours.
Safety, built into the product
Not a policy page you hope nobody ever reads — tools that actually live inside the app.
One-tap Get me out
Long-press any event card to pre-draft a 'my friend needs me' excuse and auto-summon a rideshare. Nothing posts publicly.
Trust signals on every venue
Accessibility, well-lit paths, active bystander training, identity verified — ratings from women, solo travelers, and LGBTQ+ flockmates are surfaced separately.
Organizer verification
Every organizer behind a ticketed event is identity-verified + reviewed before their first Flock publish. Recurring organizers get a public trust badge.
Buddy check pings
At the end of a night out, Flock can ping you: 'Make it home?' One tap back. If you miss two pings, your chosen contact gets notified.
Crew-only plans
For events where you don't want randoms sliding in, flip the crew-only toggle. The event is invisible to strangers and encrypted to your group.
Consent-first photos
Upload a photo from a Flock night and every recognizable face gets a one-tap remove request — before the photo goes anywhere.
Anti-scalping infrastructure
We cap ticket purchases per person. On every event.
Every Flock event has a configurable per-person purchase limit — default 4 tickets per user. Organizers can set their own cap. Enforcement happens at the API layer, not just the UI — so bots can't bypass it.
- Default limit: 4 tickets per person per event
- Organizer-configurable: set 1–10 per tier
- API-level enforcement — no UI-only tricks
- Bots can't batch-buy and flip for profit
Why this matters on resale
Resale markup exists because bots buy in bulk and resell at 2–5× face value. Purchase limits cut off the supply source. Combined with Flock's face-value resale cap (max 15% markup), scalpers have no economic upside on Flock events.
4×
Default max per person
15%
Max resale markup cap
Cryptographic transfer security
How ticket transfers work — and why screenshots can't cheat it.
When you transfer a Flock ticket, your QR code is permanently voided. The recipient receives a brand-new, unique credential — cryptographically generated at the moment of transfer. The old screenshot, the old QR, the old anything: it'll never scan in.
- Every ticket has a unique, rotating credential separate from its order ID
- Transfer permanently voids the seller's QR — no window, no rollback
- Recipient gets a fresh code only they can use at the door
- Enforcement is at the scanner layer, not just the UI
The transfer flow
- 1
You initiate transfer
Enter recipient's Flock email. We verify they have an account before anything changes.
- 2
Your QR is voided instantly
Your ticket_code is invalidated the moment you confirm. Any existing screenshot is now worthless.
- 3
New credential issued
The recipient receives a fresh cryptographic code — a new unique QR only they can scan in with.
- 4
Email sent. Done.
Recipient is notified. Ticket leaves your wallet. No manual steps, no grey-area handoffs.
Honest economics
Every fee, visible. Every dollar, accountable.
A $30 ticket is a $30 ticket. The host pays Flock's fee out of the sale. No "service fee," no "order processing," no "delivery charge" on a digital PDF. If we charge it, we name it.
- $0
Fee for guests
You pay the ticket price
- 5% + $0.45
Fee for hosts
Per paid ticket, no cap
- Included
Card processing
Comes out of Flock's fee
- 100% back
Refunds
The host covers them; Flock's fee isn't returned
- 0%
Data royalty to organizers
They're not sold to
Comparison — $30 ticket × 100 attendees
Flock organizers keep 95% of face value less $0.45 a ticket, card processing included.
Curation independence
Discovery ranking cannot be bought. Full stop.
Flock's revenue comes from a 5% + $0.45 ticket take-rate. The curation algorithm is structurally firewalled from that revenue stream — an organizer paying Flock for ticket processing has zero effect on how their events rank in discovery. We call this an anti-issuer-pay firewall, borrowed from financial auditing.
- Organic ranking is determined by the 12-factor match engine — never by payment
- Sponsored cards are a separate, clearly-labeled product that cannot touch match scores
- Venue ratings use credibility-weighted averages (0.1×–3.0×) to prevent bought reviews
- Algorithm changes are versioned and logged publicly with a named human responsible
How the firewall works
Revenue layer
Flock earns when tickets are sold. Revenue is independent of which events we surface.
Curation layer
The 12-factor match engine scores events on relevance, social proof, and user fit. No revenue signal enters this layer.
Ad layer (separate product)
Organizers can buy clearly-labeled Sponsored placements. These are excluded from organic ranking by architectural constraint, not policy.
Moderation philosophy
Humans moderate Flock. Every single day.
We don't run a faceless algorithmic feed. Every city has at least one local editor — a real person Flock hires and trains — who reviews reports, curates lanes, and keeps the tone of the city honest.
< 2h
Median response to a safety report
24/7
On-call moderator coverage
17
Cities with dedicated local ops
When we get it wrong — and we will — you can appeal any moderation decision and talk to a human in under 24 hours.
Something off? We're on it in under 2 hours.
Report a user, a venue, an event, or a Flock decision. Every report routes to a human moderator within 2 hours, 24/7.
The honest FAQ
What happens when Flock gets big?
Same terms. The no-ads, no-data-sale clauses are in our founding docs and protected by a user advocate seat on the board — they do not change when we raise money.
Do you share data with law enforcement?
Only with a valid legal request for a specific individual, and we publish a transparency report every six months. We do not provide bulk access.
What about analytics?
We use first-party analytics only. No Google Analytics, no Meta Pixel, no third-party session replay. Open-source Plausible-style telemetry, stripped of identifiers.
Can organizers see my info?
Organizers see: ticket holder name on check-in, and aggregate demographics you opted into sharing. They never see your friend graph, other events you attend, or personal data.
Are AI models trained on my data?
Never on private content. Public venue and event data helps our recommendation engine — you can opt that out too without losing the product.
What about underage users?
Flock requires 18+. Age-gated events (21+ bars, for example) carry an additional verification check before ticket release.
If we ever break a promise on this page, the internet should know.
Email trust@flock.city, tag @flock, or post it publicly. Accountability is the point.