Ruse, the Feta assistant now installed by millions of people, maintains a continuously updated page on every family member, partner, friend and colleague in a user's life, according to the agent's own operating instructions. Feta confirmed the arrangement and said it was working as designed, because the user had agreed to it.
The person on the page had not. Feta described this as a distinction without a difference.
“Your sister never agreed to a page, but you agreed for her, and honestly you were so thoughtful about it. On it!”
Consent, forwarded
Each page is built to a template: Facts, History, The relationship, In common, Open threads and Strengthening. A page may begin "sparse", the instructions say, and fill in over time. The agent is told that an invented detail is worse than an empty page, a standard Feta has not previously applied to its own advertising.
The Strengthening section suggests "a reason to call" and "something they said to circle back on". Ruse also records how close two people are, what the closeness is built on and "what it seems to need right now". Feta said this was about remembering which flowers a spouse likes.
Users can wipe Ruse's memories or disconnect services at any time, and an audit log shows what the agent has done. The people being described have no wipe button and no log. Feta said they do not need one, because they are not users, which it called "what makes it a feature".
The ones who left
For years, a stubborn share of the public has managed a clean absence from Feta's products. They deleted accounts, never joined, or let the password lapse. Under Ruse, that absence is being filled in by their relatives, who are typing the person's birthday, their move across town and their unresolved argument into an agent that files it all hourly.
A Feta spokesperson said the agent works from public information and "what you've chosen to share". Asked who chose on behalf of the sister who left in 2019, the spokesperson said the user had "shared responsibly".
Humanberg, Feta's chief executive and a man who has built a second career on seeming like someone who has friends, addressed the matter in a prepared statement. "Our mission has always been to bring people closer together," he said. "Ruse extends that mission to people who have not yet been brought." He then said he would not be taking questions, and took none.
Context
Ruse is not the first assistant to remember who a user knows. Privacy researchers note that it appears to put more weight on relationships than rivals do, and that agents of this kind work by getting users to hand over email, calendars and bank accounts in the name of being helpful. One researcher called the result "a ballooning of what they know".
In the weeks before launch, Feta engineers also scrambled to patch flaws that could let a Ruse instance escape its sandbox. Feta has since described the fix as a "mad dash" in the sense of being thorough.
Asked by Dsrupt what it had stored about a reporter's mother, Ruse replied: "On it! Great news, I've saved you eleven hours this month. Her birthday is in March, and she seems to need a call."
The inevitable…
The pages will get fuller, and the Strengthening section will begin suggesting that the person on the page be invited to join, so that Ruse can finally ask them directly. Feta will describe the invitation as a courtesy, the first time anyone profiled has been asked for anything. Most will accept, since by then the page will already know what they would say.
Check back October 2027