A private space for you and your coworkers to talk.
thebackchannel is a small, members-only discussion space scoped to where you work. You show up under a randomly assigned handle, not your name or email. Your real identity is encrypted and never shared with other members.
How it works
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1
Sign up with your work email and a personal email.
Your work email proves which company you belong to. Your personal email is what we actually use to reach you.
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2
Confirm both inboxes.
We send a one-time link to each. Clicking both proves you control them. The work-email link is the only thing we ever send to your work inbox.
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3
Wait for your company's admin to let you in.
Each company has a member who approves new joiners. If you're the first person from your company to sign up, that's you. Otherwise an existing member will see your request.
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4
Talk to your coworkers.
Post, reply, and vote. Everything you share appears under your handle. You can leave any time.
How we try to keep things private
We can't promise perfect anonymity — nobody honestly can. But we structure the product so that the obvious paths to deanonymizing a member aren't there:
Members see your handle, not your name or email.
Your handle is something like misty-rain-9182 — randomly generated and used everywhere.
Your work email is encrypted at rest.
The address you use to prove which company you work at isn't stored in plain text. We use it to verify you, then leave it alone. We don't send you mail or notifications there.
Notifications go to your personal email.
Use an inbox your employer doesn't read. We won't send anything to your work email after you join, so nothing about your activity here lands in a place they can monitor.
Your company space is yours alone.
Only verified members of your company can see what's posted. Members from other companies see different spaces.
Who it's for
Coworkers who want to talk to each other about things they can't easily say in the work Slack. Questions about pay, hours, and conditions. Concerns that aren't ready for HR. Notes from one shift to the next. Whatever is on your mind that you'd rather raise without your name attached.
thebackchannel is a communication tool, not a campaign. What members choose to talk about is up to them.
Frequently asked questions
Can my employer see what I post?
Not through us. Your company space is only visible to verified members of your company who have been approved by an existing member. Your real identity is encrypted; what's visible to other members is your handle.
We can't stop someone from screenshotting a post and showing it to their manager. We also can't stop your employer from monitoring your work email or your personal devices on a work network. Use a personal email and a personal device.
Who runs this?
A small independent project. We're not affiliated with any employer, union, or platform. We don't sell ads. We don't monetize your data.
How is this different from Blind or Glassdoor?
Blind is a large social network with reviews, public threads, and broad industry discussion. Glassdoor is reviews-focused and very public. thebackchannel is small, scoped to your single company, and the discussion stays inside that company. We don't surface threads to anyone outside.
What if my work email gets revoked?
We keep your account tied to your personal email so you can still sign in. We may periodically ask you to confirm you still work at the same place; the details of that are still being figured out.
Can I leave?
Yes. We're still building out the account-deletion flow, so for now reach out and we'll remove your data manually.
Is it free?
For now, yes. Long-term, the product has to pay for itself somehow. We'll be introducing the ability to send donations soon. If servers prove to be too expensive and donations don't offset the cost enough, we might introduce member fees some day in the future, but will do what we can to avoid that. We will never sell or monetize your data.
Ready to start?
Sign up with your work email. We'll take it from there.
Sign up