London, UK: A small team is launching Lyra, an open platform for online conversations which challenges traditional social media. Lyra is nonprofit, ad-free, community-focussed, and offers powerful tools to enable rich conversations and prevent harassment.

“Open communication is vital to democracy, discourse and society,” says philosopher A.C. Grayling, an advisor to the Lyra team. “It’s very important to support discussion and debate better than current social networks do.”

Lyra (http://www.hellolyra.com) supports complex conversations and debates by using an innovative tree conversation format and providing powerful tools which allow users to control what they read and who sees what they write.

“People are natural communicators, natural debaters and chatters,” says project leader Fintan Nagle, a researcher in cognitive neuroscience at University College London. “We need online tools which support a full range of expression.”

"There is increasing concern that extensive social media use can lead to people feeling 'addicted' or unable to stop checking their phones," says Dr Leila Jameel, a psychologist at King’s College London. There are also concerns that social media use can cause or exacerbate a range of problems, such as body image issues or sleep disturbance.

Lyra focusses on positive communication rather than addiction; tools to prevent harassment are built into the platform.

“Open communication is vitally important to democracy, discourse and society,” says philosopher A.C. Grayling, an advisor to the Lyra team. “It’s very important to support discussion and debate better than current social networks do.”

Visit Lyra at http://www.hellolyra.com And view an example conversation at http://www.hellolyra.com/hard_problem

Read the rest of the press release here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2018/05/prweb15468619.htm