Tech
A new app, HyperTexting, turns the open web into a scrollable social media-like feed
A new app called HyperTexting is making it as easy to surf the web as it is to scroll through a social media feed, like Facebook or X. The app, newly available for iOS, also aims to make updating your own personal website as simple as sending a text message.
This algorithm-free vision for the future of the web was built by Caleb Hailey, a 20-year tech veteran who still remembers the internet’s early promise, where everyone would own their own domain and publish content on their small slice of the wider web. That, of course, changed with the arrival of social media.
“Somewhere along the way, social media came, and it was easier to make a page and post to your page than it was a website,” Hailey explained in a recent interview. “And the rest is history.”
Beyond centralizing access to the personal connections and conversations that take place online, the shift to social media also established norms in a consumer app’s user interface, including a scrollable feed, user profiles, and other elements, like buttons for following, liking, and commenting.
Those concepts form the basis for HyperTexting, which has been built to make the majority of the web available in this same format. On the app, users can follow people and their websites, news outlets, blogs, newsletters, and more with a click. Users can then scroll through their articles, essays, and multimedia-filled posts in what feels very much like a modern-day social media feed.
Hailey was inspired to build HyperTexting after seeing Twitter lose its way over the years, he said.
“[Twitter] used to be a good place to discover things and share things, before they were chasing growth, and no longer reverse chron,” Hailey told TechCrunch, referring to the way the main Twitter timeline is now algorithmic, instead of displaying things in reverse chronological order. Plus, he adds, “links got deranked” on Twitter, which was another change that made the app worse than before.
Then, during the COVID era, the concept of “doom scrolling” emerged, and Hailey found that social media was beginning to make him feel badly about the world.
“I basically uninstalled all the social apps from my phone,” Hailey said, noting that he found his way back to an old RSS news reader app, NetNewsWire, as a way to keep up with the flow of news and information online. Around the same time, he began working on another passion project — a way to make it easier to post to the web via a static website generator built for iPhone.
“But then I started to realize that all these different things that I was passionate about could potentially be packaged up into something that looks and feels really familiar to more people, and [could] solve that problem that has bothered me for so long about RSS — like, why don’t more people care about this?” Hailey said.
That led to HyperTexting, an app that leverages RSS under the hood but doesn’t promote the protocol in its marketing, while also providing a way to easily post to your own website.
“It’s trying to combine that publishing and subscribing experience, and really, it’s almost like a viewer to the discourse that already happens in the open web,” Hailey noted.
RSS, for context, is an open protocol that is still very much a part of the web’s underpinning, powering products like WordPress blogs and podcast feeds.
While adding your own list of RSS feeds to an app like NetNewsWire or Feedly is arguably a better way to follow website updates — especially for those who spend a lot of their day reading, like journalists or researchers — it’s not the format that everyday web users have gravitated to. Most prefer a scrollable feed — the kind that social media sites use.
Over the years, attempts to drive mainstream consumers to RSS readers have fallen short. Google shut down its own app in this space in 2013, Google Reader, and no other tools have gone mainstream since.
In addition to being able to explore and follow websites and their content, read articles without ads, and listen to podcasts, HyperTexting lets users add their own website, like a WordPress blog, Ghost newsletter, or other site built with open source static site generators like Hugo or HyperTexting’s own product, HyperTemplates.
That way, if a user wants to join in the conversation, they can post on their own website instead of a centralized social media platform. The post is then linked to the original website or article and will be surfaced in the feed for those following that same site.
The app also includes an “Explore” section that points users to trending content across the web. (For those who remember it, this is like a rudimentary version of Nuzzel, which once surfaced what people were talking about on Twitter.)
An optional Safari extension also lets users add new websites to follow on HyperTexting as they browse the web.
“My experience in tech over the last 20 years is that things have just gotten so complicated. And to some degree, there’s this urge — this irresistible urge — to reinvent the wheel. Part of my experiment with HyperTexting is like, what if we didn’t?” Hailey mused.
“Instead of chasing the platforms — the handful of websites we call social media today — and instead of trying to assert some opinion in this decentralized federated social networking thing that’s happening right now, my opinion is that the greatest decentralized social network ever created already exists, and it’s called the World Wide Web,” he said. “Like, let’s just use that.”
The app, built by Hailey’s Herd Works, is a free download on iOS. Over time, it may add premium subscriptions for extra features or include a single sponsored post per day to generate additional revenue to keep it afloat.
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Tech
Hugging Face’s CEO on why companies are done renting their AI
Open source AI is booming, according to Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue. The company has grown into something like a GitHub for AI in recent years, where AI builders can share and download open models and datasets, now used by roughly half the Fortune 500. Delangue has seen the same story play out again and again: companies start out on frontier APIs, but as they scale, the costs push them towards open source models.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talked to Delangue about why the open vs closed source fight matters in the wake of Anthropic’s halted Fable release, and why he’s worried about the possibility that a handful of big companies could end up controlling everything.
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
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Tech
Dumb Co dared me to trade my iPhone for a hacked flip phone
When Lydia Peabody saw her friend pull out a flip phone at a party last year, she burst out laughing.
“I was like, ‘Girl, what are you doing with that thing? That has to be a joke!’” Peabody told TechCrunch. But it wasn’t just a prop — her friend was participating in Month Offline, a community challenge in which a small cohort of people exchange their smartphones for flip phones.
Peabody couldn’t fathom giving up her smartphone, but her friend inspired her. A year later, her life looks different. She left her career as a licensed therapist to become the founding CMO of Dumb Co, the flip phone company that grew out of Month Offline. She’s happier.
“I did Month Offline, and I was like, ‘Whoa, why am I suddenly not anxious? Am I feeling good?’” she said. “I didn’t even know that this is what I needed, and that spending this much time on my screen after work was causing me to feel so yucky.”
Dumb Co sells flip phones that sync to your smartphone, rather than replace it, forging a happy medium between the infinite connectivity of the iPhone and the unrealistic limitations of an early 2000s relic. Funded by friends and family, the company is run by a small team in their 20s and early 30s. Like their peers, they’re dissatisfied with the fast pace of plugged-in, frictionless life. They grew up with iPads and Instagram but now crave something simpler.
In the humble shell of a $20 TCL flip phone, Dumb Co loads its own software so that users can access apps like WhatsApp, Spotify, Apple Music, and Uber. You can even access iMessage through a third-party app (shh, don’t tell Apple). By packaging familiar comforts like music streaming, maps, and blue bubble texts in a flip phone, Dumb Co is creating something for people who want to reduce their screen time and be more present but struggle to fully disconnect in a world built for the smartphone.
“We are trying to make something where you can leave your smartphone at home and literally just live your life and engage with other people,” Afreka Ebanks, Dumb Co’s communications director, told TechCrunch. “And when you want to be on your smartphone and you come back home, you can use it, because the feature for call forwarding and text forwarding can be turned off.”
I spent over a month testing the device — which Dumb Co calls the Dumb Phone — buoyed by the knowledge that in case of emergency, I always had my iPhone on hand. I didn’t use the Dumb Phone that much at first, but as I carried it around to show my friends, I noticed that they weren’t confused by my flip phone — they were envious of it.
“I’ve been getting into a lot of interesting conversations with people as I’m walking and someone sees me at the stoplight like, ‘What is this thing you have?’” said Ebanks, who bedazzled her flip phone. “I think it’s a great conversation starter, and I think it’s incredible watching people — myself included — work through the awkwardness of socializing with others, because I’m no longer distracted because I’m looking down at my phone.”
The Dumb Phone is clunky at times. It’s slower than I’m used to, and I end up spending more time typing T9 texts than if I just used my iPhone (what I really want is a dumb Sidekick with a QWERTY keyboard). Yet there’s something undeniably refreshing about knowing that if you want to open social media, take a picture you’ll never look at again, or check your email, you can’t.
When I talked to Peabody toward the end of my month of dual iPhone/flip phone ownership, she asked if I had ever left the house with just my flip phone. I confessed that I had not. I explained that sometimes I need to check public transit schedules, or keep up with Slack if I go to an appointment during the day.
“The truth is, when you say the word need, it almost gives the same meaning as like, ‘I need food or shelter,’” Peabody told me. “Yeah, sure, it’s actually helpful to know when the buses are coming, but if you don’t have that information, you turn to your neighbor and say, ‘Do you know when the next bus is coming?’”
Peabody dared me to leave my iPhone at home. The day we spoke, I had already planned to report on an event at a library across town. I tried to explain that I had never been to this library and wasn’t sure what subway stop to get off at. She told me to just write down directions before I left. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to record interviews at the event. She told me that the Dumb Phone can record audio.
“I really, really want you to do this, because I know that this is something that’s best experienced,” Peabody said. “When I switched to a Dumb Phone last summer, I did not use my smartphone for seven weeks, and I went on a cross-country road trip to New Mexico. I did not think I could do that, but I’m telling you that you can.”
I was running out of excuses. Peabody drove thousands of miles without a smartphone. How could I tell her that I needed my iPhone so that I could triple-check that Tasker-Morris is the right train stop?
Smartphones and social media are not a one-sided evil. There’s real value in connecting with friends online, sending pictures of your dog to your grandma, and using Apple Pay when you forget your wallet. While researchers don’t classify smartphone dependence like they would a substance addiction, there are certainly parallels. Not everyone has an adversarial relationship with their phone, but for people like me, more screen time often makes me feel more anxious, unfocused, and less grounded. Peabody even compared her relationship with her phone to getting hooked on Juul in college.
“It was really, really hard, but I totally broke that addiction, and now when I see a vape or something, I actually detest it — I’m like, ‘Oh no, I do not want that,’” she said. “When I turned off my smartphone for seven weeks, I would think about using it again, and I felt that same repulsion. I actually didn’t look at it or touch it.”
I was nervous to leave my iPhone at home, but I trusted my knowledge of the transit system and managed to get myself across town without my iPhone (I will admit, I texted someone just to be extra super sure that the library is off the Tasker-Morris stop). When I needed to send a text that was too long for T9 typing, I sent a voice message. I felt more connected with the world around me, and nothing went wrong.
I don’t see myself exclusively switching to the Dumb Phone, but I find it valuable as a tool to help me pay more attention to how and when I’m using my smartphone. The Dumb Phone ships with a black velour pouch, which you’re supposed to put your smartphone in when you leave it at home. I can’t quit the iPhone cold turkey, but I tossed the velour pouch in my bag on a beach trip, just in case. I used it for a few things, like ordering food and checking train times. But while I enjoyed a day on the beach, I didn’t take out my phone. I had a book, a sandwich, two bottles of water, some sunscreen — what else could I need?
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Tech
Disney+ is considering a free streaming tier, report says
Disney+ is considering making some of its streaming library available to watch for free, according to a report from Business Insider.
Disney’s chief product and technology officer Adam Smith discussed the possibility of offering free-tier content during a town hall on Thursday, the report says. It’s unknown which shows or movies would be included or when the streaming platform would consider launching the offering.
The rollout of free content would allow Disney+ to better compete with free services like YouTube and Tubi, which are capturing a growing share of consumers’ viewing time.
As streaming giants continue to raise prices, consumers have been turning to ad-supported services. According to data from Neilson, free streaming services represented 18.7% of U.S. television watch time in April 2026, rising from 16.8% in April 2025 and 12.7% in April 2024.
By offering select free content to consumers, Disney+ could better differentiate itself from its streaming peers like Netflix and Amazon Prime, especially as Apple TV+ and Paramount+ already allow non-subscribers to access a few free episodes.
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