This blog will be used to further engage with the Octocon community, and to offer support to Octocon's users on Tumblr!
What is Octocon?
Octocon is the modern, all-in-one platform for people with dissociative disorders (like DID and OSDD) to manage their disorder and express themselves!
We provide a mobile application (currently available for Android) that lets you manage your alters, track your front history, keep a daily journal, and keep your friends up-to-date on who's fronting.
We also provide a Discord bot that automatically syncs with the Octocon app to let you send messages as your alters.
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to join our official Discord support server for help!
Click "Keep reading" below for a short FAQ about our platform!
FAQ
How do I use Octocon?
You can get started by downloading our mobile app on the Google Play Store, or by inviting our Discord bot to your Discord server!
When will the app be available for iOS or other platforms?
The iOS app has a projected launch date of late 2024 to early 2025!
We also plan on developing a web app, but it's further down the backlog, so we don't have an exact time frame yet.
Is the platform safe/secure? Will you look at my data?
Octocon takes privacy and security extremely seriously. We will never peek into your data stored on our platform without explicit consent, regardless of how you identify.
We'll also never terminate an account for any reason other than abuse of our platform or suspicions of illegal activity.
Furthermore, we take great effort to secure our servers, and all of your data is private by default. If you'd like an alter to be shared with your friends or publicly, you'll have to explicitly set them as such!
For more information, please read our privacy policy.
Are you "anti-endo"?
Octocon takes the stance of being "traumacentric"; our platform is designed to be used by those with dissociative disorders caused by trauma, though we can not and will not ban or otherwise impede users from accessing our platform if they don't identify as such.
We do ask that our Discord community ("the Octocommune," not our support server) remains traumagenic-only spaces for the comfort of our members, but we are actively against harassment of those who identify as non-traumagenic.
Ever since Simply Plural's discontinuation was announced, there has been a disproportionate influx of both genuine concerns and misinformation regarding our platform. I've written this post as our official, full-scale announcement to these controversies, and have done my best to explain our perspective and point out misinformation where necessary. I fully understand if Octocon's controversial past hesitates you from using our platform. It is entirely valid to distrust us or refuse to utilize our platform in spite of the information I'm providing here; trusting a platform with your sensitive information is an immensely difficult decision, and it's ultimately up to every individual system to determine whether we are safe for their needs. However, many individuals' distrust for our platform is unfortunately rooted in misinformation or outdated information as opposed to fact or our current processes, which is what I hope to alleviate with this announcement.
You can read the full announcement here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K49iBm-OacFpzbVzFRpQBByHEef_IdM8JUH7OsCX8uw
Due to the recent spread of rather concerning information on Tumblr, I wanted to make this announcement to clarify our relationships with our alternative services.
Simply Plural
Apparyllis has not officially sponsored Octocon as the replacement for Simply Plural. They made the decision to loosely recommend us as a potential alternative and gave us advance warning so we could prepare ourselves.
Octocon, LLC and Apparyllis U.G. have no business relationship, and (except for a small, unrelated conversation in early 2025) we had never communicated with them until 2 weeks ago.
I (the developer) have not paid any money to Apparyllis beyond my own Patreon subscription, or to any other project.
We were approached and asked for our consent to allow Simply Plural to mention us as an alternative, not the other way around.
We were initially concerned that our willingness to be mentioned as an alternative could be mistaken for being a "greedy attempt to steal their users," and were reassured that this willingness was not misunderstood.
Ampersand
Octocon's relationship with Ampersand is surface-level and we have no official partnership.
At the most, I have had friendly, software development-related conversations with the lead developer of Ampersand over the past month.
Ampersand's endorsement of Octocon as an alternative (or lack thereof) was made entirely of their own volition and had no input from Octocon.
Regarding other criticisms & accusations
I've been replying to some posts individually on Tumblr, but I plan to make follow-up posts shortly that elaborate on other criticisms of our platform (such as ToS concerns, our stance on system origins, and a moderation incident from early 2025). I fully understand if individuals are uncomfortable with using our platform given these criticisms, but I'll do my best to clear up any misinformation, provide our perspective, and allow our community to make an informed decision about whether they'd like to move forward with migrating to Octocon.
My DMs on both Tumblr and Discord (@atlas_oc) are open if you have any questions or concerns. I'm committed to being as transparent as possible and interacting with potential community members, even given these strenuous circumstances.
Hi! I was just wondering when the next update will be, if you have it planned?
Now that the platform is in a much more stable state, we're working on updates to the Discord bot as we speak! The plan is then to open up a beta for the next app version (v1.4) in mid-January.
Could we possibly get a way to export our data?/gq
This is actually one of the first things on our priority list, as decided by our recent Octocon usage survey! We'll be providing the option to export your data as a PK- and Tupper-friendly JSON file.
Hey, everyone! Now that v1.3 has been out for a while, it's time for our second official usage survey! We last did one of these in September 2024, so I'm excited to see what our newer members think of the platform and how opinions have shifted.
Feel free to submit a response with as little or as much detail as you'd like, whether you've used the bot, app, or both! The survey is also completely optional, and you're able to complete it fully anonymously. For legal reasons and the safety of our community, we also ask that only those 16+ complete the survey. Thank you for your understanding!
Made with Tally, the simplest way to create forms.
I'm pleased to announce that Octocon is now available on the App Store!! The app can be downloaded by the general public using the link below.
In parallel with the iOS release, we've also released our largest app update yet for all platforms: v1.3, codenamed "Ammonite"! A detailed changelog will be posted in our Discord community shortly.
Octocon is the modern, all-in-one toolkit for people with DID and OSDD to manage their disorder and express themselves.
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WE DID IT! Apple has finally approved Octocon for distribution on the App Store; all I need to do is press one button and it’ll be available worldwide.
I’m aware of and apologize for the fact that we’re ~2 months late on our release schedule, but Apple made it extraordinarily difficult for us to release our app. For those who patiently supported me in the App Review hellscape, I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I’m busy tomorrow and likely Friday, so I’ve made the decision to release Octo earlier than I originally planned: today, April 2nd, at 6 PM ET, or less than 12 hours from now!
Around an hour before the launch, I’ll be opening up a public VC in our Discord server to hold a launch party, just like we did with the Android release. Feel free to come if you’d like to discuss our platform and/or watch the ribbon be cut live!!
We're the modern, all-in-one toolkit for people with DID and OSDD to manage their disorder and express themselves. | 2783 members
Hey, we heard that you had "set a cap on number of alters to reduce fakers" and was wondering if that was truly something said by the octocon team. If true that's very disappointing and hurtful to polyfragmented and other complex systems.
This isn't true at all. Octocon has a of 32,767 alters per account, which was added purely to prevent abuse of our platform by e.g. bots that create hundreds of thousands of alters. Incidentally, this also makes our database slightly more efficient, while affecting a very small portion of good-faith users.
Hi, everyone! I've been hard at work for the past week porting Octocon to iOS, and the app is in a nearly fully functional state!
We're currently just waiting on Apple to approve the transfer of our developer account to our newly formed LLC, and then we'll be onboarding testers to TestFlight as soon as possible.
If you'd like to be one of the first to use Octocon on your iPhone or iPad, feel free to join our Discord server and apply to be an iOS tester!
We're the modern, all-in-one toolkit for people with DID and OSDD to manage their disorder and express themselves. | 2129 members
Hi, everyone! It's time for a quick update on the status of the Octocon project.
Business filings
We're currently in the legal process of filing for an LLC in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It's expected that we'll be approved sometime in the next few weeks, at which point we'll be able to switch ownership of the app over on Google Play and file for an App Store account. Once this is all set, I'll follow up with our business name and address for transparency.
iOS development is on schedule!
I'll be getting a Mac to start development on the iOS app within a week or two! I expect to have a working prototype in closed testing by early January.
Because the demand for iOS testing is so high, I can't guarantee that everyone who signs up for the testing program will get access. I believe we can only accept a few dozen more people beyond our current testing base, so if you'd like to be part of the program, please sign up as soon as possible on our Discord server!
v1.2.1 release
Version 1.2.1 of the app is expected to be released for Android sometime this weekend. This release will include a plethora of features, including:
Expanding the "Show alter IDs" setting to fully hide IDs in the app when disabled
Marking alters as untracked (won't show up in your alter count)
New dyslexic font (Lexie Readable)
Deleting accounts and wiping alters from within the app
Option to hide alters from the root screen if they're in a tag
Project statistics
On another note, Octocon's growth the past few months has been absolutely incredible. Here are some of our current statistics:
517,505 tracked alters
8,434 Discord servers using the bot
7,998 registered Octocon accounts
2,950 Android app installations
2,035 members in this Discord server
438 members in the Octocommune
Thank you all so much for your continued support of the project! <3
Hi, I've been wondering if there's an expected day or month for the IOS release? And how has things been going for the process?
I've been really excited and waiting for the day it's available! :]
Current plan is still early 2025! We're pretty much ready to start development; our business filings are in progress as we speak and we mostly have access to the required hardware.
Hey, everyone! Atlas here. With v1.2 having been out for a while, and my time to work on the project growing slightly limited, I've decided to create a short survey to both gauge how we've done so far, and determine what we should work on going forward.
Feel free to submit a response with as little or as much detail as you'd like, whether you've used the bot, app, or both! The survey is also completely optional, and you're able to complete it fully anonymously. For legal reasons and the safety of our community, we also ask that only those 18+ complete the survey. Thank you for your understanding!
Hi, everyone! My apologies for being late, but here's our official Transparency Report for August 2024!
Summary
I (Atlas) took a long-needed personal break from the project for a good chunk of August after working tirelessly to launch the platform the month prior. However, I was still working enough behind-the-scenes to get v1.2 out on September 1st! This was immediately followed by our second major downtime event due to an unavoidable incident with our hosting provider, but the platform was fully recovered within ~12 hours. We also launched the Octocommune, a sister-community to the project (feel free to join if you haven't already! It's where all of our general chats have gone).
As of now, our full attention is being turned towards preparing a private beta for iOS. This is largely blocked by my financial ability to acquire the hardware necessary to develop for the platform, as well as to launch a business surrounding the project. Speaking of…
My personal situation
Many of you know this, but for this project's entire existence, I've been an unemployed high school dropout. Octocon largely served as a way to occupy my time while I spent the rest getting a GED and tirelessly searching for a full-time job. After months of searching, I'm elated to announce that I've finally landed one! I should be starting within the next few weeks.
Updates will almost certainly slow down compared to our initial launch, as I won't have nearly as much time to dedicate to the project anymore. I deeply apologize for this, but I need to put my own financial stability first! I can't make any promises as to how much time will be dedicated to developing new features going forward, but I can promise at the very least that the platform will be kept stable and safe in its current state. That said, I'm still very passionate for the project, so I'll do my best to pump new features out as my mental health allows!
Forms
I've attached documents to the corresponding message on our Discord server detailing our income, expenses, and total savings, as well as a receipt of our server hosting invoice.
Note: Server hosting costs greatly increased as we used our new financial freedom following the Patreon launch to spin up servers in South America and Africa, improve the reliability of our databases, and future-proof the platform for the foreseeable future. Roughly half of our previous Patreon supporters canceled or downgraded their subscription (which is completely ok!), which resulted in our costs overshooting our income by $49.04. This deficit was paid out of our own pocket, and was not deducted from our emergency savings. It's important to note that these costs shouldn't be increasing for a very long time!
Hi, everyone! We've just set up a new community Discord server for Octocon, that we're calling the Octocommune!
In addition to general and mutual support chats, we plan on hosting regular events to keep everyone engaged. We've been hard at work on this for quite a while now, and we're finally excited to show it off!
You can join us with the link below:
Check out the Octocommune community on Discord - hang out with 250 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
