Los Angeles AI Startup Is Building a Social Algorithm Designed to Help People Achieve Their Goals and Improve Their Lives Instead of Maximizing Attention
| “What if the algorithm was engineered with the sole objective of helping you make your goals and dreams a reality?” – Chad Scott, Founder of Liftoff |
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — As Meta and the social-media industry face a historic reckoning over engagement-driven design, Los Angeles-based Liftoff is introducing a fundamentally different approach: an AI-powered social platform designed around human improvement rather than attention maximization.
The timing follows Meta’s multibillion-dollar settlement with states over allegations involving social-media design and youth harm, bringing renewed national attention to a question Liftoff has spent years trying to answer: What if algorithms were engineered to help people achieve their goals and dreams instead of simply keeping them engaged?
“The question isn’t whether algorithms influence human behavior. They already do,” said Chad Scott, founder of Liftoff. “The question is what we’re asking those algorithms to optimize for.”
A Different Kind of Social Algorithm
Liftoff includes a social feed, but rather than designing its algorithm primarily around clicks, scrolling or time spent on platform, the company has designed it to surface content, challenges, experiences and connections intended to help users make meaningful progress in their lives.
“Liftoff doesn’t reject the algorithm. It changes what the algorithm is working for,” Scott said.
The broader debate over social-platform design raises a question extending beyond any single company or legal proceeding: What should an algorithm ultimately be designed to optimize?
“Our answer is human progress. What if the algorithm was engineered with the sole objective of helping you make your goals and dreams a reality?” Scott said.
Instead of a feed algorithm primarily asking, “What will keep this person engaged?” Liftoff is designing its technology around a different question: “What could help this person improve?”
More Than a Social Feed
The social feed is one component of Liftoff’s larger AI-powered Life Operating System, which is designed to connect areas of life that are typically addressed through separate applications.
SHAPE: Use technology to help shape users toward the lives they want to build.
CONNECT: Recognize that health, relationships, finances, emotions, identity and goals affect one another.
SOLVE: Help identify what may actually be keeping a person stuck rather than addressing symptoms alone.
ADAPT: Change recommendations as a user’s circumstances, state and needs change.
Users can check in about their current state, goals and challenges. Liftoff’s AI is designed to use that information to help identify what the user may need next and guide them toward relevant tools, experiences, content or actions.
The intended loop is: Understand the person. Identify the obstacle. Deliver the experience. Measure what happened. Adapt what comes next.
From Attention to Human Progress
Scott believes the current debate around social-platform design reflects a larger opportunity to rethink the relationship between technology and its users.
“The first era of the internet connected information. The social era connected people. Then platforms learned to monetize attention,” Scott said. “We believe the next era can be about helping people become better.”
Liftoff is currently in beta, with access open to Pioneer members. A waitlist is open for free users, with broader onboarding expected to begin in late Q4 2026. As the platform expands, Liftoff plans to generate revenue through premium AI subscriptions, human coaching and a practitioner ecosystem.
The company’s longer-term objective is to create a connected platform capable of helping people make progress across multiple dimensions of their lives rather than requiring users to assemble those pieces themselves through disconnected applications.
“The world doesn’t need another social algorithm that becomes better at keeping us online,” Scott said. “It needs an algorithm that becomes better at helping us improve our lives.”
Public Campaign to Bring Liftoff to Market
Liftoff has also launched a public GoFundMe campaign to help fund the final engineering, infrastructure, security, testing and launch operations needed to bring the platform to a broader audience. The campaign invites people who believe technology should fight for their future rather than their attention to help bring that alternative to the public.
GoFundMe campaign: https://gofund.me/liftoffnow
About Liftoff
Liftoff is an AI-powered Life Operating System designed to help people understand what’s keeping them stuck, take the right next action and adapt as their lives change. Its social feed is designed around human improvement rather than attention maximization.
SHAPE. CONNECT. SOLVE. ADAPT.
Technology designed to fight for your future instead of your attention.
| MEDIA CONTACT Chad Scott Founder, Liftoff | Phone: +1 657-200-5059 Email: csn@liftoff.now Web: https://liftoff.now |