Data and sources
What Friction stores, where it comes from, and how to have an item corrected or removed.
Where the feedback comes from
Items are built from public posts about a product: Hacker News comments (read through the public Algolia Hacker News Search API), public GitHub issues and discussions of a vendor's open-source repository, and public community-forum topics. Each source type was checked for its terms and robots rules before use.
Friction never uses G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, Gartner Peer Insights or Reddit, and does not copy vendor idea portals.
What is stored about a source
| Stored | Not stored |
|---|---|
| The URL of the post, its date, the source type, a summary written by Friction (at most 400 characters) and one excerpt of 25 words or fewer, copied word for word and checked in code against the fetched text. | The full text of the post. The author's name or handle. Anything about the author. The fetched text is discarded once the item has been extracted. |
An item is published only with at least one source link that answered when it was fetched, and only if its excerpt appears verbatim in that source. Several posts about the same problem are grouped into one item; the number of independent source threads is shown on every item.
How the text is processed
A large language model, reached through Friction's AI gateway, reads the public post text to extract the problem, the area and the severity. Visitor and account data (such as email addresses) are never sent to it. Summaries are generated, then stored; they can be wrong, which is why every one links to its source.
What is stored about you
| Who | What | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Visitors who only read | No account, no tracking cookie, no analytics or advertising scripts. | — |
| People who sign in | Email address; a session cookie (httpOnly) tied to a hashed token. | Sessions 30 days. Sign-in link tokens are stored hashed and expire after 15 minutes. The account lasts until you delete it from the account page. |
| People who report an item | The email address and text you enter, and the outcome. | Kept to handle and evidence the report. |
The full policy, including your rights and the controller's identity, is the privacy policy.
Corrections and removal
Every item has a Report this item link. A report about personal data or copyrighted material hides the item immediately while it is reviewed. Reports about accuracy mark the item as disputed once the reporter confirms by email. Reports are reviewed within 3 working days, the outcome (removed, corrected, or kept) is recorded and emailed to the reporter.
A vendor or any other person can use the same form; no account is needed.
Limits
Friction only holds what is public, so it reflects the people who post in public: developers and technical buyers are over-represented, and closed-source products have thinner records than open-source ones. Each product page says how many source threads it rests on. Friction does not replace talking to a product's customers.