How can we help?

Frequently asked questions

How do you define good news?

We use an "Artificial Personality" to help us decide quickly if a story from one of our sources is actually positive, and rates every news story on a scale from 1 (terrible, end of the world stuff), to 10 (free ice cream for everyone worldwide). Here's what the personality looks for when scoring news stories: progress, achievements, solutions, help, innovation, recovery, cooperation. In addition, the artificial personality has the following rules: Positive news is not controversial and actively shows progress. It is not about the acquisition of wealth by large corporations, or corporations making deals with each other that do not benefit humanity. Specific rules are used when scoring. For instance: - Score low if a story is primarily about big companies or corporate interests making deals with each other. - Score low if a story is neutral, negative, explanatory, or just informational. - Score low if a story is about problems, conflicts, crises, or disasters. - Score low if a story is an explainer or educational content. - Score low if a story is about controversy. A human reviews all news periodically (usually within 24 hours).

Some bad news made it into my feed. How do I report it?

While all the news on Rally is made by real people, we collect our good news using help from an artificial personality that can make mistakes. If some bad news made it into your feed, you can flag it as "Not Good News" for review by our team by clicking the thumbs-down icon or tapping "Not Good News", depending on where you are reading from.

Who picks the news?

Rally doesn't produce our own news articles. Instead, we connect you to vetted, trusted, international news publishers (by logging in, you can customize which sources you want to hear from). Rally runs a scraper that searches public RSS feeds from these publishers periodically and finds stories that are positive, using an artificial personality to judge the positivity level of a story. The actual news itself is never AI-generated. A human reviews all news periodically (usually within 24 hours).

What does changing my region actually do?

Changing your region (which is usually set automatically based on your current location in the app or on the web) switches which news outlets you see. It doesn't change how Rally selects the good news we show you. It shows you news from sources in your region (usually your continent). If you want to customize this even further, create a Rally account to select which news sites to show.

But aren't you stealing news from publishers?

Nope. Rally uses articles published in public RSS Feeds and, unlike some news aggregators, we don't host full article content on our app or website. Instead, when you decide to read an article on the Rally app, you're directed to the actual publisher who did the work while staying in the app. On the Rally website, you can also click "or Continue Reading At The Source", which redirects you to the original publisher. We never host publisher content on Rally. We also never break publisher paywalls. We want publishers to make money. After all, they did the hard work of the reporting you're reading.

Why am I seeing the same story twice?

We try not to let this happen often, but sometimes, if multiple news sites publish a similar story at the same time, Rally will grab both. We're just too excited by all the positivity. Please feel free to send the duplicate to us for deletion by emailing support@rally.news.

Do I have to sign up to use Rally?

Nope. But customization is relatively limited while logged out.

I keep getting stuck behind paywalls. How do I stop this?

When logged into the app or website, you can select "Avoid Paywalls", which only shows you stories from publishers that either (a) don't paywall their articles or (b) you have an active subscription for. If you're not subscribed to any news sites, that's not a problem. You can still access only non-paywalled publishers.

Why do you keep pushing me into the app?

On the web, we're not able to show full articles on Rally without using unethical practices or scraping content. Therefore, the Rally app is designed to balance the need to support publishers with a streamlined good news experience. If you don't want to get the app, that's no problem, you can read articles directly at the original publisher by clicking "or Continue Reading At The Source" on an Article's Rally reader page.

Do you have an app?

Oh yeah! As of writing, we're available on the Google Play store worldwide. On our app, we also offer exclusive features like offline story reading and the Discover Feed, our doomscrolling killer that shows you an endless feed of good news. Click the button in the lower righthand corner to download the app.

Is the Rally App coming to the App Store (iOS)

We would love to, but we're having issues with Apple's "Minimum Functionality" requirements. We're working on the issue, and we'll let you know as soon as we have more information.