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Show HN: Anonymous Discussion Platform For Any Topic (think Reddit meets Slack)
- niahmiah 9y agoAnonymity kills. See Yik Yak.
- kvcrawford 9y agoDidn't Yik Yak die when they started eliminating anonymity?
- tenryuu 9y ago4chan seems to be doing fine
- _aaya 9y agoI disagree. Growing up I've had plenty of positive experiences with various anonymous communities online. I do think that giving IDs to individual messages (instead of individual people) and not having an upvote/like system will go a long way in reducing the kind of toxic behavior you have in mind though.
- gandutraveler 9y agoYahoo chat rooms
- tyrw 9y agoI don't know if anonymity is supposed to be the differentiator here, but true anonymity is not delivered by an end product -- it's essentially a "client side" concern.
- _aaya 9y agoThe concept I was going for is discussion without identities. Maybe anonymity wasn't the right word.
- curiousgal 9y agoSoo..IRC?
- penpapersw 9y agoNope. On IRC you get to choose your nickname.
- _aaya 9y agoI think it's a little different in the sense that identities are tied to individual messages instead of individual people. When there's a conversation going, you can't tell how many people you're talking to, so the experience is a bit different in an important way.
- Jazgot 9y agoIt is unusable on mobile
- _aaya 9y agoYeah, sorry about that. For now it's only for desktop, but if there's interest, I'll look into making mobile apps.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- AlbertoGP 9y agoGiven how short most posts are, I wanted to see how it would work out if they were inline boxes instead of flex layout and got this: https://matracas.org/tmp/hashtags.chat.jpeg https://matracas.org/tmp/hashtags.chat.jpeg
- rotrux 9y agoThis was an unfortunate experience despite having potential. Great example of the 2-sided nature of mass-anonymity.
- _aaya 9y agoYeah the main channel is pretty chaotic. You can filter links, gifs, emojis, and any words you don't want to see by using the settings. If you try other tags and play with the settings, it shouldn't be as bad.
- adventured 9y agoI think you're doing it in reverse, and that doing so is likely to scare off a vast number of potential users. You should have some initial filters in place, that the user can then optionally remove as they gradually dip their toes in the water. There will be no meaningful content created until you do that, because the chat will just always be initially flooded for everyone with the worst kind of vile trash. The first impression will be very bad, and that'll be that.
- _aaya 9y agoHmm maybe. I don't think content will be an issue if sharing is handled through linking to specific tags (hashtags.chat/NotReallyPrivate instead of hashtags.chat) because of the built in lack of discoverability.
- rotrux 9y agoI think I see the points that both @_aaya & @adventured are trying to make.(Either of you guys please correct my recapitulations if I misunderstood.) I think @_aaya is saying that: while the initial landing may be intimidating for any given visitor, those who are able to take control of the chaos via his/her features will have a rich experience. I think @adventured is talking about the "customer-lifecycle"(to use a fun buzzword.) since "customer lifecycle" is measured in seconds/milliseconds on the internet, the already important nature of first-impressions get magnified due to the smaller volume of opinions that can be garnered before people just leave. My opinion: First impressions are critical, especially on the internet. This site clearly has a lot of promise, but may catch on better/faster if there were some tweaks to the beginning of the user-experience.
- evbots 9y agoso....AOL chatrooms?
- DerfNet 9y agocool concept. I actually wrote basically the exact same thing in PHP as my final project for CS50X (nowhere near as polished as this of course). guess I can scrap plans for ever updating it :) one thing that would be nice: a built-in profanity filter library. I see you have the ability to add words to a blacklist, but it'd be nice to just flick a switch and get rid of the garbage.
- _aaya 9y agoThanks! And yeah, I definitely need to look more into filters.
- ijafri 9y agoNo private rooms?
- _aaya 9y agoEverything is public, but tag discovery is limited to the default list, specifically searching for a tag, or directly linking to it. I'm planning to replace the default section with a trending list though.
- lauretas 9y agoWhat does "anonymous" mean in this context? Simply because I get to post a message without registering a nickname, it doesn't mean I'm anonymous...
- _aaya 9y agoAnonymous to other users, I guess.
- notheguyouthink 9y agoDoes anything on the internet? I'm not trying to defend them, I'm more curious what your definition of anonymous would be? Eg, they could say anonymous and not store any data either, but potentially you can still be identified through an oversight - meaning even if they attempt to be anonymous, you might still not be anonymous. If taken far enough, only the most rigid, hardened and secured communication seems well vetted to keep you anonymous - but then we can't even trust them running it either. So yea, I'm just curious what's reasonable here. What would make you feel good when associated with the word anonymous?
- lauretas 9y agoIf they advertise a software as an "Anonymous Discussion Platform", the minimum standard that I think of is a P2P network built on top of GNUnet, Tor, or other similar networks.
- glitch003 9y agoThis is really fun. Suggestion: make it more obvious when someone tags me in a message. Since my tag is always changing, it's hard to tell when someone is talking to specifically _me_. Maybe you could make messages tagged with any of your past tags a different color or highlight or something? Thanks!
- _aaya 9y agoThanks! Glad you find it fun~ I'll look into different highlight colors and other ways to improve the UX.
- sixdimensional 9y agoIf you don't mind sharing - what kind of equipment/stack is it deployed on, and how is it keeping up with the HN load?
- mirekrusin 9y agoHungs for everybody when people start sending quick messages (and everybody copies)
- _aaya 9y agoI think this was due to keeping all loaded messages in the DOM. I've made it so that only the most recent messages are kept if you're scrolled to the bottom, so it should be better now.
- cranjice 9y agoneed to implement basic rate limiting... it's a spamfest in there
- stockkid 9y agoLooks solid. Did you use any existing frameworks for building a chat platform, or did you write it from scratch?
- _aaya 9y agoThanks! I used firebase for the back end which made the implementation pretty straightforward.
- kwhitefoot 9y agoToo awkward to filter out the junk. There needs to be a point and click way of telling the program to filter out words and users.
- _aaya 9y agoThanks for the feedback. I'm still experimenting with finding the right balance between convenience and making users conscious of the decision to censor others. For now you can use the settings in the sidebar to filter words and message IDs.