The crowd meter is a weighted average of reports from people physically at the bar within the last 45 minutes - nothing else feeds it. Not the bar, not us, not a guess derived from your phone. When the map says Packed, it's because several people standing in that room said Packed, recently, and their track records say they're worth believing.
One report, four taps
A report takes about thirty seconds: crowd level (Dead, Steady, Busy, or Packed), then optionally the cover you just paid, the wait, and a preset tag like "Line moving fast" or "Cash only tonight." No free text - which means no spam, no beef, nothing to moderate.
And it's anonymous. Absolutely, permanently, with no setting to change it. Nobody can see your reports - not strangers, not your friends, not the bar, not ever. If reports could be traced to people, honest reporting would collapse, so this one isn't configurable. More in the support FAQ.
The 150-meter rule
A report only counts if your phone is within 150 meters of the venue, verified server-side against the request timestamp. You cannot hype a bar from your couch, your dorm, or the bar across the street.
There are rate limits too: one report per bar every 20 minutes, at most 12 reports a night, and the bar has to actually be open. Break any of those and the app tells you exactly which one - no mystery errors.
Not every report counts the same
Each report gets a weight before it touches the meter. Your track record matters most: after every night, your reports are compared to what everyone else at that venue said in the same window. Call it straight over time and your weight climbs toward double; call it wrong repeatedly and it sinks toward a quarter. Verified location multiplies it. A report also decays fast - its influence halves every 18 minutes, because a bar an hour ago is a different bar.
Verified students (.edu confirmed) count a little more. Reporters who've earned Trusted status count the most, and their reports skip the settling delay.
Damping, or why one hype man can't flip a bar
The published level can only move one step per computation cycle, no matter what comes in. One overexcited friend cannot swing a room from Dead to Packed - it takes several people, agreeing, from inside the building.
When there aren't enough fresh reports to be confident, the meter blends what it has with that venue's history for this weekday and hour - and labels it. The meter would rather say "probably" than pretend.
The anti-cheat file
The stuff that keeps the map honest when someone tries anyway:
Device fingerprinting catches multiple accounts on one phone.
Accounts under 24 hours old carry minimum weight until they have a record.
A burst of same-direction reports from new, low-reliability accounts freezes the venue's state and flags it for human review.
Bar owners and staff are structurally barred from reporting on their own venue - or any venue within 500 meters of it.
Anyone can flag a reading as wrong. A flag asks people on site for fresh reports; it never edits the number directly.
What bars can and can't do
Bars get a real dashboard: they post specials, set the cover schedule, fix hours, add photos and events. What they can't do is touch the meter. They can't report their own crowd, can't see who reported, can't message users, and can't pay to look busier - promoted placement is bounded, always labeled, and can never lift a bar above one that's genuinely hotter.
That's not us being difficult. A cooked map is worthless to everyone, including the bars. The honest number is the product.