Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

LikePatrol was built by a small independent team of engineers and researchers who watched the gap between what people experience on social media every day and what the people around them understand about it grow into a real safety problem. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Meta Platforms, Instagram, TikTok, X, or any social media platform. Our purpose is awareness: a person can follow hundreds of accounts, and the content those accounts publish is endless — no one can realistically read through all of it. LikePatrol turns what any public profile follows into something readable, recognizable, and actionable. By entering any public social media handle, you get an instant picture of the digital environment surrounding that account — the themes, communities, and signals shaping what they see every day.

LikePatrol analyzes the public content of the accounts a person follows on social media and turns it into a Network Influence Environment Assessment: a readable picture of the digital world that surrounds them. It is a research and awareness tool: a way to make sense of any public online environment. It is never a substitute for clinical, legal, or professional judgment, and the report describes the environment around a person — not the person themselves.

LikePatrol is built for anyone who wants to understand public social media environments — researchers, journalists, marketers, recruiters, investigators, coaches, community leaders, and curious individuals. It is NOT a background check, a consumer report, or an automated decision-making system. The report must NOT be used — by you or by anyone you share it with — to make decisions about employment, hiring, firing, promotion, tenancy, credit, insurance, immigration, or any other decision that produces a legal or similarly significant effect on the subject. We are not a Consumer Reporting Agency under the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and our reports are not 'consumer reports' as defined by the FCRA. If you need a report for any of those decisioning purposes, you must use a properly regulated background-check provider instead. Using LikePatrol for any of those purposes violates our Terms of Service.

We only analyze information publicly available on the internet: posts, captions, profile bios, and links — content the account owners have chosen to make public and visible to any internet user without a login. You provide a public handle (username), and we analyze the public accounts that handle follows. We look exclusively at what is already public on each profile. We never receive, access, or store any private data. We do not access direct messages, non-public stories, drafts, saved items, location history, app analytics, login activity, or device contacts. We never store passwords, log into anyone's account, or take any action on behalf of any person on any platform. We have no special API relationship with Meta, TikTok, X, or any other platform. We do not perform facial recognition, biometric inference, or photo-based identification. All analysis is based on text and metadata only.

Our classification pipeline uses leading commercial large language models accessed via their official APIs. For every public account in the network, the pipeline does three things: 1. It collects a sample of the account's public posts and profile metadata. 2. The model reads that sample and assigns tags from a fixed, human-curated taxonomy (the Feed Fingerprint taxonomy). It is never asked to diagnose, profile, or pass judgment on any person — only to answer 'is this kind of content present in this public feed, yes or no?' 3. Those tags are grouped into dimensions inspired by established academic and public-health research. Our dimensions are our own; we are not formally affiliated with, licensed by, or endorsed by any of the research traditions that informed our thinking — among them Bronfenbrenner's ecological model, the CDC's YRBSS, Common Sense Media's content-rating framework, Search Institute developmental assets research, PIRUS / PERIL radicalization studies, Pew Research political typology, Holland's RIASEC model, and Schwartz's theory of basic human values. We do not fine-tune models on user data, our model providers do not use API inputs or outputs to train their models by default (and we have not opted in to any data-sharing program), and the model only describes what is present in a public feed — it never makes a decision about a person.

No. LikePatrol analyzes only publicly available content — information that is already visible to any internet user without a login. We do not notify the person whose handle you analyze, we do not contact them, and we do not require their participation. Because we only look at public data, the person may not know that their public following list and the public content of those accounts has been analyzed. If you choose to share the report with others, that is your decision.

LikePatrol only reads content that the followed account owners have chosen to make public. We do not bypass any login wall, we do not access private accounts, we do not download or republish posts, and we do not retain the raw public content — it is used only in the moment to compute the report's signals and is then discarded. Only the derived signals are kept.

No — the report is a starting point for awareness and conversation, not a verdict. LikePatrol is an informational tool, not a substitute for professional, clinical, legal, or medical advice. If you have serious concerns — for example about self-harm, eating disorders, hate, harassment, addiction, or radicalization — please consult a qualified professional (mental-health provider, family doctor, legal advisor, or other specialist) or contact the appropriate helpline listed in our Guidance directory.

Treat it as a starting point for a conversation, not a conclusion. Open the per-area evidence in the report so you can read the specific public content the signal is based on, verify it for yourself, and consider the context. If the pattern looks real and concerning, the next step is a calm conversation with the person involved and, where appropriate, a qualified professional.

AI systems can produce false positives and misread nuance, irony, and context. If a result seems wrong, open the per-area evidence for that signal and review the original public content directly. If you believe an account has been misclassified, you can mark it as safe — it will be removed from the analysis and the report will update automatically.

Yes. We never ask for your social media password and we cannot log in as you. We do not sell your data, we do not use it to train AI models, and we do not share it with advertisers. Here is exactly what happens with your data: - You enter a public handle on our platform. We fetch the public following list and analyze the publicly available content on each profile — information visible to any internet user without a login — solely to detect the signals the report needs. This public content is never stored; it is used in the moment, the signals are extracted, and the content is discarded. - The long-lived record is only the derived signals (tags, scores, area aggregates) used to render the report on demand. Full details are in our Privacy Policy.

If you encounter technical issues, want to report an inaccurate result, request removal of an account from current and future reports, or have any other question, email contact@likepatrol.ai. We appreciate all feedback.

LikePatrol is available only in the United States and Latin America, and we design it to operate within the laws of the territories where it is offered. Not a background check: LikePatrol is not a Consumer Reporting Agency and our reports are not 'consumer reports' under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). You may not use LikePatrol to make decisions about employment, housing, credit, insurance, or any other purpose covered by the FCRA. Your privacy rights: Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA) and similar state and national privacy laws in the territories we serve, you have rights to access, delete, and correct your personal information, and to opt out of any sale or sharing. We do not sell your data. See our Privacy Policy.

No. LikePatrol analyzes publicly available content published by accounts a person follows. Following an account does not necessarily imply endorsement, agreement, support, or participation. The report is designed to describe the online environment surrounding a person, not to determine their beliefs, intentions, identity, mental health status, or future actions.