10. Troubleshooting & FAQ
Most platform problems fall into one of a handful of categories. Find your symptom below, follow the fix, and if it still doesn't work, contact support through the conversation inbox or the email address used during registration.
In this section
- 10.1 Sign-in problems
- 10.2 Email not received
- 10.3 Video upload / recording problems
- 10.4 VBQ score concerns
- 10.5 Search results don't include me
- 10.6 "I can't message this person"
- 10.7 "My credit card was declined for the $1 signup"
- 10.8 The page won't load / 502 / 504
- 10.9 Messages I sent are not visible to the recipient
- 10.10 Verifiable credential shows "Not verified"
- 10.11 Frequently asked questions
10.1 Sign-in problems
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| "Email or password incorrect." | Typo, or you signed up with SSO and have no password yet. | Use the SSO button you originally used; or click Forgot password. |
| "This account has not been activated." | Activation link in the welcome email never clicked. | Visit /resend-verification/. |
| "This account is disabled." | Auto-flagged for policy violation, or admin action. | Contact support — include the email you registered with. |
| "Too many sign-in attempts." | Rate limiter triggered after 5+ failures. | Wait 5 minutes; then reset your password instead of guessing. |
Stuck on /signup-payment/ after sign-in. |
One-time $1 signup payment not completed. | Finish the payment. There is no way around it; the platform requires it for spam prevention. |
| "Reset link is invalid or has expired." | The link is single-use and expires after 24 hours. | Request a new one at /password_reset/. |
10.2 Email not received
If a verification, password-reset or notification email has not arrived after 5 minutes:
- Check your spam / junk folder. Add
noreply@ditto-up.networkto your contacts. - Check the typo. Visit
/resend-verification/and confirm the email address you registered. - Corporate mail filters. If you registered with a corporate address, your IT may quarantine outbound mail from new vendors. Try a personal Gmail / Yahoo / iCloud as an interim and contact your IT to allow
ditto-up.network. - Hard-bounced before. If a previous email to your address bounced, our mail provider will suppress future sends. Contact support to be removed from the suppression list.
For ongoing communication you can also turn on SMS notifications in /settings/ (requires a verified mobile number).
10.3 Video upload / recording problems
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| No camera/mic permission prompt. | Site permission previously denied, or you're inside an in-app browser (Facebook / LinkedIn). | Open in Chrome, Edge or Safari 14+. Click the lock icon in the address bar → site settings → set Camera and Microphone to Allow. Reload. |
| Recorder loads but the Record button is greyed out. | Browser doesn't expose getUserMedia (very old Safari / Firefox). |
Update the browser to a current version. |
| Upload fails halfway. | Lost network connection, or file >55 MB (nginx limit). | Re-record (the recorder compresses to ~10–20 MB for 90 s) or switch to a stable network. |
| "Failed to transcribe video." | The audio level was so low that AWS Transcribe could not detect speech. | Re-record with the mic closer to your mouth, indoors, mic unmuted. The recorder warns you in advance if your input level is near silent. |
| Video processed but score never appears. | Grader backlog (rare). | Refresh the page; if still missing after 5 minutes, your attempt is safe — try again or contact support. |
| Old video URL gives "Video unavailable." | Presigned S3 URL expired (24 h TTL). | The site auto-refreshes when you re-open the page. If embedded externally, call /VBQ/fresh-url/ for a new URL. |
The full pipeline (browser → S3 → DinoCloud → AWS Transcribe → Bedrock → DynamoDB → poll) is described in 4.11.
10.4 VBQ score concerns
| Concern | Reality |
|---|---|
| "My score went down on a re-record. Why?" | The grader looks at the new audio fresh — if you rushed the second take, hesitated more, or said less specific things, the score is lower. The previous attempt is still in your history; you can publish whichever one you prefer. |
| "My subject knowledge is great but I scored 'Developing'." | The 5 dimensions weight relevance and specificity. If your answer wandered into related topics or stayed abstract, those dimensions pull the average down even when knowledge is high. Re-record with one concrete project as the spine of your answer. |
| "The transcript misspells a technical term." | AWS Transcribe is general-purpose. The grader is robust to misspellings (it uses the audio + context, not just text), but if a term is consistently wrong on multiple takes, you can re-record articulating it more clearly. |
| "I want to dispute the score." | Re-record. The grader is deterministic per-input; the same audio always produces the same score. The fastest correction is a new take. |
10.5 Search results don't include me
If you don't appear in /all_candidates or in search:
- Check visibility. Open
/candidate-settings→ Visibility. If you are Unlisted or Private, that is the reason — switch to Public. See 9.1. - Verify email. Unverified profiles are forced to Unlisted regardless of your visibility setting. Visit
/resend-verification/if needed. - Add at least one term. Profiles with zero terms are excluded from search.
- Wait for re-index. New profiles appear within a couple of minutes. New term additions can take up to 5 minutes to surface. Re-load the search page after a short wait.
If you appear in /all_candidates but not for a specific keyword, check that the keyword maps to a term you have actually claimed — searching for "plasma" will match candidates with plasma arc welding on their profile, but won't match someone who just mentioned plasma in their bio.
10.6 "I can't message this person"
There are several reasons messaging may be blocked:
| Cause | Fix |
|---|---|
| You have hit your daily stranger-DM cap. | Wait until tomorrow, or build reputation (see 6.13). Existing conversations are unlimited. |
| The recipient has Private visibility. | They have to follow you back, or accept your message via their moderation queue. |
| The recipient has set Only people I follow can DM me. | Same — they need to follow you first. |
| The recipient has blocked you. | The send fails silently; you get a generic "User unavailable." There is no way around being blocked. |
| Your account is new (today) and AI screening is holding the message. | Add more context to your message, or wait for the recipient to approve from /moderation/. |
10.7 "My credit card was declined for the $1 signup"
The signup payment is processed by Stripe. Common decline reasons:
- 3-D Secure challenge not completed — your bank popped a verification window in another tab; complete it and retry.
- Address mismatch — your card's billing address is different from what you typed. Stripe rejects on AVS mismatch in some flows.
- Corporate card with vendor restrictions — the corporate card has a Mastercard/Visa MCC restriction. Try a personal card.
- Bank flagging the transaction as international — Stripe charges from a US-based merchant; some non-US banks reject. Try a different card.
If you use multiple cards back-to-back you may also hit a rate limit. Wait an hour and retry.
The $1 charge is non-refundable by design (it's a spam-prevention gate). If the platform did charge you twice in error, contact support with the Stripe receipt and we will refund.
10.8 The page won't load / 502 / 504
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| 502 Bad Gateway | App restart or temporary outage. | Refresh after 30 seconds. If it persists, check our status page (linked from the support email). |
| 504 Gateway Timeout | A specific endpoint is slow (term details with deep hierarchies are the historical culprit; the leak was patched on :73 in 2026-05-04). |
Refresh; if it persists on a specific page, please report. |
| Page loads but is missing CSS | Static-asset CDN cache miss or browser cache mismatch. | Hard reload (Cmd-Shift-R / Ctrl-Shift-R). |
| Endless loading spinner in messaging | WebSocket connection failed; falls back to polling. | Reload; if the underlying network blocks WebSockets (e.g. corporate proxy), the polling fallback will kick in within 30 s. |
10.9 Messages I sent are not visible to the recipient
| Cause | Fix |
|---|---|
| The message is held for clarification by AI screening. | The sender (you) sees it as sent; the recipient sees nothing until they approve from /moderation/. Reach out via a different channel and ask them to check. |
| The recipient has archived the conversation. | The message did land; they will see it the next time they open the archive (/messages/archived/). |
| You used Delete for me. | This hides only your view. To remove it for everyone, use Delete for all within the 5-minute window. |
| The recipient has blocked you. | The send fails silently; the message never lands. |
| Your message was scheduled. | Check /messages/<conversation_id>/scheduled/; cancel from there if needed. |
10.10 Verifiable credential shows "Not verified"
If the public verification page shows a red ⚠:
| Cause | Fix |
|---|---|
| Signature mismatch. | The credential was tampered with after issue. Re-fetch from your wallet. |
| Issuer key rotated without re-issue. | The issuer (us, or a third party you imported from) rotated their key but didn't re-issue the credential. Reach out to the issuer for a fresh copy. |
| Status list says revoked. | The issuer has revoked this credential. The verification page shows when and why if the issuer published a reason. |
| Issuer DID document not reachable. | Network or hosting problem on the issuer's side. Retry; if persistent, the credential is effectively expired. |
If the credential is one we issued and you believe it should still be valid, contact support with the credential UUID.
10.11 Frequently asked questions
Q. Is Ditto Up free? A. Yes, with a one-time $1 signup payment for spam prevention. Optional paid features are the Featured candidate boost and the Recruiter subscription — both opt-in, both fully cancellable. Ordinary candidates and employers can use the platform forever without paying anything beyond the $1.
Q. Where are videos stored?
A. Private S3 buckets in AWS us-west-2. Playback is via short-lived presigned URLs. See 4.8.
Q. Can I use Ditto Up without sharing a video? A. Yes, but most candidate features (search ranking, term-page presence, employer-required application questions) work much better with at least an intro video. Some employer-mandated VBQ requirements simply can't be satisfied without recording.
Q. Is the AI grading public? Can employers see my unpublished low scores? A. No. Unpublished VBQ attempts are visible only to you. Employers see only what you publish, plus what you submit as part of an application.
Q. What happens if Ditto Up shuts down?
A. Your verifiable credentials are W3C standard, signed by did:web:ditto-up.network. As long as the DID document at /.well-known/did.json remains hosted (which is committed for at least 12 months past any shutdown), every credential we ever issued remains verifiable on any third-party tool. You can also export your wallet at any time via /wallet/export.
Q. Why was my VBQ video not transcribed? A. Almost always: the audio was too quiet for AWS Transcribe to detect speech. Re-record with the microphone closer to your mouth.
Q. How long does it take a new account to be discoverable in search? A. Verify email → complete profile minimums → set visibility to Public → wait ≤5 minutes for re-index. Typical end-to-end: ~10 minutes from signup.
Q. Can I have multiple business accounts? A. Yes — every user account can manage multiple businesses. Use the dropdown in the top navigation to switch between them.
Q. Can a candidate also post jobs? A. Yes. The candidate and business sides are two halves of the same account. Either or both can be active.
Q. What language is the platform in? A. Currently US English. Per-message translation works between any pair of major languages (auto-detected). Full UI translation is on the roadmap.
Q. Can I delete just one of my videos? A. Yes — every video has its own delete endpoint. See 4.6 for VBQ, 4.2 for intro and 4.7 for the looking-for / can-help-with slots.
Q. Are my messages encrypted? A. Messages are stored encrypted at rest (AWS-managed keys) and transported over TLS. They are not end-to-end encrypted — the platform must be able to read them for AI screening, translation, summary and search. If E2E is a hard requirement, use a different channel for that conversation.
Q. How do I report a bug? A. Use the Report action on any page, or email support from the address used during registration. Bug reports go straight to the engineering queue.
Next: 11. Glossary — every Ditto Up term in plain English.