Research
Supporting research into relationships and loneliness is part of Kuutti ry’s purpose. Both are studied too little with data that people gave knowingly, so Kuutti is built from the start to let a person choose to take part, and to keep what they give from being traced back to them.
The questions
Every event Kuutti can record for research names the question it answers, in a public list. Among them:
- How many people step away for a while rather than leave, and how long do their breaks last?
- How often does a like become a match?
- How many matches fall silent, after how many messages?
- How far into a conversation do people share a contact of their own, to meet outside the app?
- What do people say when they tell Kuutti they have found somebody, here or elsewhere?
What taking part means
Research is a separate question in the app, with a separate yes, and without that yes nothing is recorded for it. You can take the yes back in the app at any time; that does not undo what was done before.
An event holds what happened, the hour in which it happened, your age as a band of years, your gender and answers from fixed lists. It never holds anything you wrote yourself, your name, your photos, where you live or whom you seek. The privacy policy has all of it, and the wording of the yes, which is still a draft.
How people stay anonymous
- The identifier names nobody. It is random, made from nothing about the person, and it is not their account’s. When a person withdraws or deletes their account, the link to it is removed, and their events can no longer be traced to anybody.
- Time is kept to the hour, never finer.
- Nobody stands out. The copy for researchers holds a combination of age band, gender and the like only when at least ten people share it. Under ten, the details are withheld or made coarser, and an event that is still under ten is left out.
- Researchers get that copy and nothing else. Their access reads those files alone, every read is logged, and their agreement with the association forbids trying to find out who anybody is.
How the copy works is public, down to its columns.
Where it stands
Kuutti is not open to the public yet, so no real person’s data has gone to any researcher; the copy is tested with invented people. The privacy policy holds the association to naming a research partner, with what it receives, before any data goes to it.
Working with the association
If you study relationships or loneliness and want to work with data that people gave knowingly, write to hello@kuutti.app.
The bylaws also let the association give money to universities, universities of applied sciences and public research institutes in the European Union.