What Mack isn't

Not a replacement for parenting

Mack is a safety net. Mack is not a substitute for parenting. This matters enough to say plainly, on its own page section, and we mean it.

Mack is highly effective, and getting better with every release, but Mack is not perfect, and Mack is not built to be. Even the best safety guard in the world can't replace the conversations you have with your child about being kind, being careful, and being a good friend online. That work is yours, and it always will be.

Here's the honest picture of what Mack can and can't do:

• Mack will sometimes miss things. Slang shifts, children invent new ways to be cruel or to take risks, and harm is often in the meaning rather than the words. Mack catches a lot, but Mack will not catch everything.
• Mack will sometimes flag the wrong thing. A joke between friends, a song lyric, a project on a sensitive topic. We'd rather Mack be a little too cautious than miss something serious, but it means the occasional false alarm is part of the deal.
• Mack reads what's on the screen, not what's in your child's head. Mack can spot a message about a problem. Mack can't notice that your child has gone quiet, that they're tired, or that something is bothering them they aren't saying out loud. You can.
• Mack doesn't teach values. Kindness, honesty, knowing when to walk away from a conversation, knowing when to tell an adult: those come from you, from school, from the people in your child's life. Mack can only flag a moment. The lesson around it is yours to teach.

Think of Mack the way you'd think of a smoke alarm. A smoke alarm is brilliant, and it's saved countless lives, but nobody mistakes a smoke alarm for fire safety. You still teach your child not to play with matches. You still keep an eye on the cooker. Mack is the same kind of tool: an excellent extra layer, on the side of an attentive parent. Not a stand-in for one.

If you want help with the conversations themselves, we publish a free learning library for parents and children: short, practical guides on conversation, privacy, friendships, resilience, and online safety. It's free, on the web and in the app, with no account needed.

Why an AI agent, not a word list

Word lists need someone to write down every bad word in advance. That sounds doable until you meet the real problem: children talk in slang, abbreviations, and in-jokes that change all the time; harm is usually in the meaning, not the words themselves; and innocent messages get caught when a banned word turns up by accident.

The result: too much gets stopped (your child gives up on the app and finds somewhere less visible to chat), and too much gets through (the harmful stuff didn't happen to use a word on the list). Both problems at once.

Mack is trained on how children actually talk, so Mack picks up on the meaning, not just the words. Mack handles rephrasing and context in a way a word list simply can't.

Mack is a best guess, not perfect. Mack will sometimes miss things. Mack will sometimes flag a message that's fine. Mack is a safety net, not a substitute for talking to your child, and that's on purpose. The goal is to surface things worth talking about, not to do the parenting for you. (More on that here.)

What Mack will never do

Commitments, not aspirations:

• Mack will never send your child's messages anywhere we, or anyone outside your family, can read them. Not when Mack flags something, not when Mack is quiet, not ever. When Mack flags a message, the alert that travels through our servers carries the message sealed on your child's phone so only your phone can open it: the category, the Mack version, the time, and a locked box we have no key to.
• Mack will never run on our servers. The phone is the line. We will not move Mack to our servers, even if it would be cheaper or simpler. The whole point of Mack is that Mack lives on the phone.
• Mack will never silence a child in crisis. Crisis flags bring up help and send you an alert, but the message still reaches the person on the other end. We will not block a cry for help.
• Mack will never be used to build a profile of your child. Alerts exist so you can see them and so we can spot if Mack is getting worse at something. They are never used for advertising, never sold, never shared with anyone else.
• Mack will never be a substitute for talking to your child. Mack isn't a stand-in for parenting. Mack is highly effective but not perfect, and Mack is not a replacement for raising your child to be kind, careful, and sensible online. Mack catches what Mack catches, surfaces what's worth a conversation, and stops there. The conversation is yours.

How Mack gets smarter

Mack improves between app releases. There are two ways that happens, and neither one means us reading your child's messages by default.

Telling us when Mack got it wrong. If you think Mack got it wrong, flagged when it shouldn't have, or missed something obvious, you can tap the alert in your Orbit app and add a short note. The note is about why you disagree; it doesn't include the message itself.

Sharing a single message to help train Mack, only if you choose to. Separately, there's an option to share the wording of a specific message with us, so we can use it to make the next Mack better. This is off unless you turn it on for that one message. You have to tap "share this one" each time. There's no blanket switch. When you do share, everything that identifies your family is stripped off before the message reaches us: no name, no email, no chat name. There's no way for us to trace a shared message back to you.

Most families never share a single message, and that's fine. The option exists because some parents want to help us improve Mack, and we wanted to give them a clean, narrow way to do that.