Your story / your permission / your return
A story here is not content. It is a record you own, with your permission, its source and its return path attached. This page is the whole mechanism.
Write it, speak it, or sit down with someone who records it with you. Photos, audio and video stay attached to your record. Agreeing to be recorded is one decision. Publishing is another.
Everything arrives held. Nothing is public by default. Where a story carries family or cultural knowledge, the people who hold that authority get their say too.
On your own page you choose each use: public, your community, or you alone. You can change your answer later.
What opens is small: the pieces you said yes to, for the places you said yes to. Each keeps a thread back to you.
You can see where your story travelled and take it back. The platform stops showing it, asks each partner site to remove it, and checks that they did.
When an organisation uses your words in a report or a campaign, that use is recorded on your ledger, and what came of it comes back to you.
The full platform
Empathy Ledger connects private capture, collaborative review, public storytelling and accountable use. It is built for people telling stories and for the communities and organisations responsible for caring for them.
Storytellers and invited teams can record interviews, write, add photographs and video, and keep source material together. Drafts stay private while they are shaped and reviewed.
For storytellers, families and community teams.
Consent is recorded for the particular story, audience and purpose. Cultural review, attribution and withdrawal remain attached when an approved story moves into another format.
For storytellers, cultural authorities and organisations.
Approved stories can have a stable public page that readers can share. Public profiles, galleries, themes and maps help people follow the relationships around them without exposing private sources.
For families, communities, partners and the public.
Organisations can bring consented stories into reports, learning and impact work while keeping the teller and source visible. Use is traceable, and permission can be narrowed or withdrawn.
For community organisations, researchers and funders.
Where your story lives
Your story is held once, in Australia, under your name. Nobody else holds a copy of the record; they hold a door to it. Every door asks the record the same question before it opens: is this person's permission live, for this reader, today? What a door does with your story is written down and shown to you first, at your own door.
Your own private link. Everything held about you, one file to take it all away with, and the switch to withdraw.
A passphrase link the community holds. It shows their material, drafts and held items included, and their reply lands with the people looking after it.
The page. Only what has been consented, reviewed where cultural authority asks for it, and switched public by the person appears.
JusticeHub, Goods on Country and others re-read from here on every visit, under a grant that names the story and the site. Withdraw, and the next read refuses. Where a partner keeps a copy, we tell you how long it takes to go, and where we cannot know, we say that.
Follow one story
Step through what happens to a story as people decide about it, and see where it may be seen after each decision, and why.
Someone records a story. Nothing has been decided yet.
Them
Shown
This is theirs to see.
Their community
Not shown
No yes is recorded for this place, so it is not shown.
One partner website
Not shown
No yes is recorded for this place, so it is not shown.
Another partner website
Not shown
No yes is recorded for this place, so it is not shown.
Everyone
Not shown
No yes is recorded for this place, so it is not shown.
An example. No real person, story or website. Each answer is the platform's own, worked out from the example's records.
The rules, one by one
These are the rules every door asks before it shows anything, in the order a story moves through them. Each one is held in the platform's code and checked every time the code changes.
Every yes records who gave it, how, and on what day.
A choice made when someone first shares a message is kept as their yes from that moment.
Where a community has chosen it, a named authority from that community can say yes. Never over a person's own no.
Nothing is shown until a person has decided it may be.
The people who look after a record can pause it at any time. Looking after something never gives permission to show it.
Software can point things out. A person always decides.
People's stories, photos and recordings are never sent to outside AI services.
Each yes says where something may be seen: by the person alone, their community, one website, or everyone.
When something is marked as carrying cultural knowledge, an Elder's yes is needed as well as the person's.
A young person under 16 needs a guardian's yes as well as their own.
A community can agree together for the photos of an event. Anyone in them can still say no for themselves.
Something with no people in it, like a landscape, is marked by a person before it can be shown.
When several people are in a photo, it shows only if it may be shown for every one of them.
A quote follows the yes given for the recording it came from, and the person can still say no to any quote.
Empathy Ledger's public pages show only what a person has decided everyone may see.
A partner website can show only what was shared with it, and only with a yes for that website.
A community's private link shows only what may be seen by that community.
A story shared onto another website is shown there only while it may be read in public.
If the platform cannot check, it shows nothing.
Each person with their own link can see what is held of theirs, who can see it, and how they said yes.
Anyone can take back a yes at any time, without saying why.
A person can take their story off any one website and leave it everywhere else.
A person's own no always wins.
An Elder's no overrides every yes.
The same record, in the work happening now
Each of these keeps a door, never a copy, and what it does with a story is written back where the person can read it. Where that is not yet true, the honest gap is written in the platform's own record of how a story is held, and it is being closed in public.
The wall of the people who built organisations out of the hardest thing that happened to them. It reads the platform each time it draws and can only show words the platform sends. A quote withdrawn here disappears there.
A ribbon and a card at every chair at the Summit in Gladstone. Your words reach the room only after your tick on the card, and the card is yours to change afterwards from your own link.
JusticeHub renders the story. The record of who agreed to what, and the switch to withdraw, stay here. One person, one record, two front doors.
Stories from the Goods project show on the Goods site by agreement, and a research account sees only what has been released to it. Impact claims trace back to a named person who can pull them tomorrow.
set at community · your community sees it, no one outside it
Your permission setting is a dial, not a switch. It goes exactly as far as you turn it, and you can turn it back. Try it: drag the handle or tap a ring. Nothing here is saved.
A story is not taken once. We return to it, and each turn of the circle reaches a little wider.
The layers around a story exist everywhere, but they take a different shape in every place. The protection bends to fit.
Every kind of story, its own protections
A childhood memory and a piece of cultural knowledge do not carry the same weight, so they do not get the same handling. The permission model bends to the story, never the other way around.
Life experiences, memories and turning points, told by the person who lived them.
Your permission setting, changeable any time.
Generational stories, family history and the people who carried them.
Usually shared with family first, public only if you choose.
Local history and shared experience, held by the community it belongs to.
Community-scoped, with broad sharing when the community wants it.
Traditional stories and cultural practices, carried under cultural authority.
Elder and community review before anything is published.
What this looks like for a person
Each page shows how one collaborator’s material is held: where it came from, who gave permission, who holds authority over it, and what it may be used for.
Proud Kuku Yalanji man, cultural mentor, artist and master storyteller.
Northern Australia · WA, NT and Queensland
Central Arrernte, Eastern Arrernte and Alyawarra Traditional Owner
Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Northern Territory
Start where you are
Begin a story, or read the 17 stories people have already chosen to share. Either way, the terms stay theirs, and yours will stay yours.