How verification works

Every post on Present carries a "Verified capture" mark. It means the post was made with Present's own camera, on the phone that posted it, at the moment its record says, and it is enforced: a capture that cannot prove itself is refused.

What the mark does not mean is that the post shows what it appears to show. A photo or video of a screen, a printed picture or a staged scene is still a real capture, taken at that time on that phone. Those are two different claims.

The mark is about the capture

When you press the shutter, your phone seals the capture. The seal is a cryptographic signature, made in a part of the phone that Present itself cannot read or alter, and Apple certifies that the key belongs to this copy of Present on this phone. A video is sealed the same way, every clip in it, before they are joined.

The time comes from Present's server, not from the phone's clock, so it cannot be set back. If a single pixel changes between the shutter and the post, the seal no longer matches and the post is refused.

There is no way in from a photo library, a file, a screenshot or another app. If it is on Present, it was taken there.

That is the whole of the promise. It says nothing about what was in front of the lens.

When something looks off

At the shutter your phone also records a small amount of evidence about the capture itself, sealed with the post so it cannot be changed afterwards, and kept private. Those checks run on your own phone; your post is never handed to an AI or an outside service to decide what it shows.

When something about a capture looks unusual, for example a capture that looks like a picture of a screen, the record adds a plain-language note saying what was noticed. We do not publish the checks themselves or how they work.

A note is information, not a verdict. The absence of one is not a guarantee either: it means nothing was flagged, not that nothing could be. Anything that will be noted is shown to you before you post, in the same words, so you always know what your record will say.

Our team reviews every post that a note was added to. A note added in error is removed. A note that tells you something worth knowing is left where it is, so you can weigh it and reach your own view of the post, and we add anything else we think is relevant. Where a review is made, the change is stamped on the record itself.

A post can also be removed at that point, where it plainly breaks our terms of service.

What this proves, and what it doesn't

Present verifies that a post is a genuine live capture from the real app on real hardware, unedited since. It does not claim to judge the scene or anyone's intent.

It verifies the capture, not the context: it can confirm where a post came from and that it has not changed, but it does not independently verify whether the content depicts objective reality.