5 ms·

Tell HN: The problem with BangWithFriends - it's not anonymous

107 points by nischalshetty 14y ago

Facebook Graph search allows you to search everyone who uses this app. Be it your friends, people who aren't your friends, just about anyone. Example criteria: "Single women I am not friends with who use BangWithFriends" "My friends who use BangWithFriends"

speik 14y ago
I have graph search. Tried this, got four results, all male. So yes, this seems to be true.
knes 14y ago
For people who don't have access to Graph searches yet. Just do a BangWithFriends search in app and you will see something like "xxx, xxx, and xx Other friends are using this app." under the app description. It will return the same list at the Graph search.
bluetidepro 14y ago
This is an interesting find. I don't necessarily care about "BangWithFriends", but I am curious if you still show up on those searches if you set the privacy to "Only me" when you signup in any app. Does that hide you from searches on the Open Graph (in respect to app usage)? I ask this because I frequently signup with Facebook on some apps, and purposely put it to "Only me" privacy, to keep my activity hidden from my Facebook friends. I would hope that doing so, would keep me out of those types of Open Graph searches. Can anyone confirm/deny this (I don't have Open Graph Search, yet)?
- rakeshpulipati 14y ago
  By changing the app privacy to "Only me" it doesn't appear in Open Graph searches
  - nischalshetty 14y ago
    Now the app developers have to see if they can have that as the default privacy setting for anyone who uses the app and this should be truly private info after that.
    - bluetidepro 14y ago
      You can set that default. See screenshot from https://developers.facebook.com/apps/[APP_ID]/permissions https://developers.facebook.com/apps/[APP_ID]/permissions: http://bluetide.pro/k6sP/2HAHipbX http://bluetide.pro/k6sP/2HAHipbX - Just change "Default Activity Privacy" to "Only me". More info: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/appcenter/#authorization https://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/appcenter/#autho...
colkassad 14y ago
Ask HN: What is BangWithFriends? Edit: a Facebook app that where you can click on friends you want to sleep with. If they have the app, they are notified. I would think this would be more cool if both of you are only notified if you both signify that you want to sleep with each other. This could also be toned down to just signify romantic interest to get more engagement.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - colkassad 14y ago
    Ah, ok..regarding my Edit above, the article I read about it didn't say that it only notified users when both showed interest.
- pawelwentpawel 14y ago
  It's a new service that has a mission to connect people, increase natural population growth and make the world more open place.
  - mnicole 14y ago
    > increase natural population growth A booty call app seems like a terrible place to promote parenting.
    - mindslight 14y ago
      Why not? Starting from just $85/mo, http://kidswithout.us/ http://kidswithout.us/ will raise them until they're 18.
      - mnicole 14y ago
        I was sadly expecting that to work.
davidu 14y ago
That's not the real problem with BangWithFriends. That's just a symptom or side-effect of the real problem. As the idiom goes, if you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas.
- jessaustin 14y ago
  True, but doesn't this apply to Facebook in general? The graph search functionality wasn't created by BwF. It's been clear since the beginning of Facebook that they are eager to reshare any info you share with them.
guruz 14y ago
I don't see the problem here. You can't find out who wants to bang who, right? You only can find out that people want to bang. Which is true since the big bang 13.8 billion years ago. (well, humans evolved later, i know)
- colkassad 14y ago
  I don't see a problem if you are single and don't care what potential employers think. And sure, if you aren't single then you shouldn't have the app installed in the first place (preempting this argument). But it still makes Facebook more of a landmine for less scrupulous users and they do make up a significant part of the population.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    > I don't see a problem if you [...] don't care what potential employers think Wait, what? My employer cares that I have sex?
    - colkassad 14y ago
      My only point is that some may care, I have no idea if yours does or not. Personally, I wouldn't work for an employer that looked for such things, but I am also a very private person and would never use an app like that.
  - bobsy 14y ago
    Does the Graph API allow you to find all app's being used by a specific person? This topic keeps coming up. If you can see all app's installed by someone then you might have the point. If you can't then an employer would need to search for this specific app and find your account. I guess it is possible that some employers may have a blacklist of hundreds of app's but I would have thought it would be more trouble to maintain compared to the value of having it. Especially considering how tomorrow I could launch "BangWithBuddies" and this app would need to be found, flagged as not appropriate for employees and added to a search list. If an employer is going to this much trouble to scan for what they believe is moral correctness then they probably aren't worth working for.
largesse 14y ago
Obviously, the answer is to have everyone sign up for BangWithFriends. Then anonymity is assured.
nischalshetty 14y ago
This app is interesting however, users are signing up for this with the idea that no one among their friends get to know about it. Unfortunately, facebook enthusiastically shows everyone using various apps. Not sure if facebook has a privacy setting to prevent others from knowing the apps I use but if they do then the developers of this app should inform this to their users. If facebook does not have a way for me to hide from my friends the apps I use then IMO, facebook should have this option.
king_jester 14y ago
> "Single women I am not friends with who use BangWithFriends" If I understand the current user base of BangWithFriends, this will return no results.
- DigitalJack 14y ago
  You are wise beyond your years.
- oellegaard 14y ago
  Well, I could not resist testing it and I received many results.
youssefsarhan 14y ago
Also, http://blog.sefsar.com/post/42926069438/bangwithfriends-is-not-anonymous-at-all-the-one http://blog.sefsar.com/post/42926069438/bangwithfriends-is-n...
awwstn2 14y ago
And then there's this search, which returns lots of results: http://f.cl.ly/items/1D3u380L3z3R2E0v101H/Married%20people%20who%20use%20BangWithFriends.jpg http://f.cl.ly/items/1D3u380L3z3R2E0v101H/Married%20people%2...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
gozmike 14y ago
This may also work, and won't require graph search: https://www.facebook.com/browse/friends_using_app/?app_id=178205172320915 https://www.facebook.com/browse/friends_using_app/?app_id=17... Replace the app_id with the id of any facebook app you want to use.
- paganel 14y ago
  Nice find, it actually works for me too.
vy8vWJlco 14y ago
Those crazy kids with their crazy ideas about how to love each other. Good for them. I can imagine Version 2.0 being even more general (a craigslist of discreet hypothetical matching) for more than just sexual arrangements. But continuing the sexual theme, obviously the next logical step is N-way group hookups. It occurs to me that something similar could also be implemented in a distributed manner (for use offline or with decentralized P2P networks, etc...) using asymmetric encryption and split keys.
- untog 14y ago
  Only on HN would sex involve asymmetric encryption and split keys. I kid, but I'd wait to see if this 'crazy idea' is successful (top tip: it won't be) before planning the second iteration.
  - TillE 14y ago
    > (top tip: it won't be) You seriously think so? Casual sex has been a major use of Facebook for quite a long time. This particular approach may not catch on, but I guarantee you that some variation of this idea eventually will work.
    - untog 14y ago
      I don't think casual sex has been a major use of Facebook for a while- certainly during it's college-only days that could have been the case, but less so in a more social network aware world. I think something like BangWithFriends is doomed to fail simply because of the visibility. People can see if you use the app, which would embarrass many. And like almost every single online dating/sexual site out there, the number of men dramatically outnumbers the number of women.
    - illuminate 14y ago
      That doesn't mean that a majority of participants want to publicly identify themselves as such, with the default privacy settings and erosion Facebook encourages. Perhaps if it was more subtle and used less targeted/classless language.
pablosanchez 14y ago
This was exactly the same problem when AirTime tried to use the Chat Roulette concept to create an app "to meet new people on your social graph". Using FB connect killed all the fun in that. You can tell by the disclaimer they're now using on their landing page.
ovoxo 14y ago
Interesting. Here's another problem I just discovered: "Men who live in Toronto, Ontario and who use BangWithFriends" - 65 "Females who live in Toronto, Ontario and who use BangWithFriends" - 6
- marvwhere 14y ago
  that was my first though, when i saw this website. "another website, which will be only used by men kind" ... and nobody got banged ever... ========= but damn now i want access to the open graph search :D just to play around with it.
- alanctgardner2 14y ago
  Well, you have to do some refractory period math, but it's doable. The bigger problem is trying to partition the graph so everyone is willing to sleep with everyone in their partition, and the partitions are evenly sized. I'm willing to bet this is an NP-hard problem.
  - meta 14y ago
    Reminds me of Stable Matching[1] but the groups aren't the same size. I guess if we can relax the "opposite sex" requirement then we reduce the problem to a Stable Roommates Problem[2] ;) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_matching http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_matching [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_roommates_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_roommates_problem
tgrass 14y ago
"My friends who have searched 'My friends who use BangWithFriends'"
tomasien 14y ago
No one I'm friends with is using it! That's so disappointing.
gailees 14y ago
The problem with BangWithFriends is that there are no females on there that are down to bang. Every person I've ever seen login has a multitude of male friends "using this app" and little to no female friends using it. This kind of app is completely fucked from the start bc of the gender disparity.
kremdela 14y ago
Great find. I had a similar issue with a dumb app I built a long time ago that was more of a learning experiment / sick joke than anything real. It was called Rubbed Out and the point was to list all of your friends you had thought about while masterbating. With bad permissions, or a small sample size, it gets really scary.
jnxfgf455 14y ago
Disgusting.
jgv 14y ago
lol yea thats the only problem with this app..
gizmo686 14y ago
I wonder what it would take to implement BangWithFriends with cryptographicly assured privacy. When I have the chance, I'll break open my crypto book and see if this problem is less impossible to solve than it seems.
CrazyGee 14y ago
I have just tried to join http://www.BangFriends.com http://www.BangFriends.com but it says i will receive an email shortly because they are still in BETA mode. Maybe they are adding the default privacy option so people cant monitor you on facebook via Open Graph?
bongs 14y ago
I agree, it is not anonymous. We created a version that is more suitable for Facebook - for people looking for serious relationships instead of casual encounters. http://www.PairBuddy.com http://www.PairBuddy.com We have got some good support in our beta launch.

107 points by nischalshetty 14y ago

speik 14y ago

I have graph search. Tried this, got four results, all male. So yes, this seems to be true.

knes 14y ago

For people who don't have access to Graph searches yet. Just do a BangWithFriends search in app and you will see something like "xxx, xxx, and xx Other friends are using this app." under the app description. It will return the same list at the Graph search.

bluetidepro 14y ago

This is an interesting find. I don't necessarily care about "BangWithFriends", but I am curious if you still show up on those searches if you set the privacy to "Only me" when you signup in any app. Does that hide you from searches on the Open Graph (in respect to app usage)? I ask this because I frequently signup with Facebook on some apps, and purposely put it to "Only me" privacy, to keep my activity hidden from my Facebook friends. I would hope that doing so, would keep me out of those types of Open Graph searches. Can anyone confirm/deny this (I don't have Open Graph Search, yet)?

rakeshpulipati 14y ago
By changing the app privacy to "Only me" it doesn't appear in Open Graph searches
- nischalshetty 14y ago
  Now the app developers have to see if they can have that as the default privacy setting for anyone who uses the app and this should be truly private info after that.
  - bluetidepro 14y ago
    You can set that default. See screenshot from https://developers.facebook.com/apps/[APP_ID]/permissions https://developers.facebook.com/apps/[APP_ID]/permissions: http://bluetide.pro/k6sP/2HAHipbX http://bluetide.pro/k6sP/2HAHipbX - Just change "Default Activity Privacy" to "Only me". More info: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/appcenter/#authorization https://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/appcenter/#autho...

colkassad 14y ago

Ask HN: What is BangWithFriends? Edit: a Facebook app that where you can click on friends you want to sleep with. If they have the app, they are notified. I would think this would be more cool if both of you are only notified if you both signify that you want to sleep with each other. This could also be toned down to just signify romantic interest to get more engagement.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- colkassad 14y ago
  Ah, ok..regarding my Edit above, the article I read about it didn't say that it only notified users when both showed interest.
pawelwentpawel 14y ago
It's a new service that has a mission to connect people, increase natural population growth and make the world more open place.
- mnicole 14y ago
  > increase natural population growth A booty call app seems like a terrible place to promote parenting.
  - mindslight 14y ago
    Why not? Starting from just $85/mo, http://kidswithout.us/ http://kidswithout.us/ will raise them until they're 18.
    - mnicole 14y ago
      I was sadly expecting that to work.

davidu 14y ago

That's not the real problem with BangWithFriends. That's just a symptom or side-effect of the real problem. As the idiom goes, if you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas.

jessaustin 14y ago
True, but doesn't this apply to Facebook in general? The graph search functionality wasn't created by BwF. It's been clear since the beginning of Facebook that they are eager to reshare any info you share with them.

guruz 14y ago

I don't see the problem here. You can't find out who wants to bang who, right? You only can find out that people want to bang. Which is true since the big bang 13.8 billion years ago. (well, humans evolved later, i know)

colkassad 14y ago
I don't see a problem if you are single and don't care what potential employers think. And sure, if you aren't single then you shouldn't have the app installed in the first place (preempting this argument). But it still makes Facebook more of a landmine for less scrupulous users and they do make up a significant part of the population.
- DanBC 14y ago
  > I don't see a problem if you [...] don't care what potential employers think Wait, what? My employer cares that I have sex?
  - colkassad 14y ago
    My only point is that some may care, I have no idea if yours does or not. Personally, I wouldn't work for an employer that looked for such things, but I am also a very private person and would never use an app like that.
- bobsy 14y ago
  Does the Graph API allow you to find all app's being used by a specific person? This topic keeps coming up. If you can see all app's installed by someone then you might have the point. If you can't then an employer would need to search for this specific app and find your account. I guess it is possible that some employers may have a blacklist of hundreds of app's but I would have thought it would be more trouble to maintain compared to the value of having it. Especially considering how tomorrow I could launch "BangWithBuddies" and this app would need to be found, flagged as not appropriate for employees and added to a search list. If an employer is going to this much trouble to scan for what they believe is moral correctness then they probably aren't worth working for.

largesse 14y ago

Obviously, the answer is to have everyone sign up for BangWithFriends. Then anonymity is assured.

nischalshetty 14y ago

This app is interesting however, users are signing up for this with the idea that no one among their friends get to know about it. Unfortunately, facebook enthusiastically shows everyone using various apps. Not sure if facebook has a privacy setting to prevent others from knowing the apps I use but if they do then the developers of this app should inform this to their users. If facebook does not have a way for me to hide from my friends the apps I use then IMO, facebook should have this option.

king_jester 14y ago

> "Single women I am not friends with who use BangWithFriends" If I understand the current user base of BangWithFriends, this will return no results.

DigitalJack 14y ago
You are wise beyond your years.
oellegaard 14y ago
Well, I could not resist testing it and I received many results.

youssefsarhan 14y ago

Also, http://blog.sefsar.com/post/42926069438/bangwithfriends-is-not-anonymous-at-all-the-one http://blog.sefsar.com/post/42926069438/bangwithfriends-is-n...

awwstn2 14y ago

And then there's this search, which returns lots of results: http://f.cl.ly/items/1D3u380L3z3R2E0v101H/Married%20people%20who%20use%20BangWithFriends.jpg http://f.cl.ly/items/1D3u380L3z3R2E0v101H/Married%20people%2...

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

gozmike 14y ago

This may also work, and won't require graph search: https://www.facebook.com/browse/friends_using_app/?app_id=178205172320915 https://www.facebook.com/browse/friends_using_app/?app_id=17... Replace the app_id with the id of any facebook app you want to use.

paganel 14y ago
Nice find, it actually works for me too.

vy8vWJlco 14y ago

Those crazy kids with their crazy ideas about how to love each other. Good for them. I can imagine Version 2.0 being even more general (a craigslist of discreet hypothetical matching) for more than just sexual arrangements. But continuing the sexual theme, obviously the next logical step is N-way group hookups. It occurs to me that something similar could also be implemented in a distributed manner (for use offline or with decentralized P2P networks, etc...) using asymmetric encryption and split keys.

untog 14y ago
Only on HN would sex involve asymmetric encryption and split keys. I kid, but I'd wait to see if this 'crazy idea' is successful (top tip: it won't be) before planning the second iteration.
- TillE 14y ago
  > (top tip: it won't be) You seriously think so? Casual sex has been a major use of Facebook for quite a long time. This particular approach may not catch on, but I guarantee you that some variation of this idea eventually will work.
  - untog 14y ago
    I don't think casual sex has been a major use of Facebook for a while- certainly during it's college-only days that could have been the case, but less so in a more social network aware world. I think something like BangWithFriends is doomed to fail simply because of the visibility. People can see if you use the app, which would embarrass many. And like almost every single online dating/sexual site out there, the number of men dramatically outnumbers the number of women.
  - illuminate 14y ago
    That doesn't mean that a majority of participants want to publicly identify themselves as such, with the default privacy settings and erosion Facebook encourages. Perhaps if it was more subtle and used less targeted/classless language.

pablosanchez 14y ago

This was exactly the same problem when AirTime tried to use the Chat Roulette concept to create an app "to meet new people on your social graph". Using FB connect killed all the fun in that. You can tell by the disclaimer they're now using on their landing page.

ovoxo 14y ago

Interesting. Here's another problem I just discovered: "Men who live in Toronto, Ontario and who use BangWithFriends" - 65 "Females who live in Toronto, Ontario and who use BangWithFriends" - 6

marvwhere 14y ago
that was my first though, when i saw this website. "another website, which will be only used by men kind" ... and nobody got banged ever... ========= but damn now i want access to the open graph search :D just to play around with it.
alanctgardner2 14y ago
Well, you have to do some refractory period math, but it's doable. The bigger problem is trying to partition the graph so everyone is willing to sleep with everyone in their partition, and the partitions are evenly sized. I'm willing to bet this is an NP-hard problem.
- meta 14y ago
  Reminds me of Stable Matching[1] but the groups aren't the same size. I guess if we can relax the "opposite sex" requirement then we reduce the problem to a Stable Roommates Problem[2] ;) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_matching http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_matching [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_roommates_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_roommates_problem

tgrass 14y ago

"My friends who have searched 'My friends who use BangWithFriends'"

tomasien 14y ago

No one I'm friends with is using it! That's so disappointing.

gailees 14y ago

The problem with BangWithFriends is that there are no females on there that are down to bang. Every person I've ever seen login has a multitude of male friends "using this app" and little to no female friends using it. This kind of app is completely fucked from the start bc of the gender disparity.

kremdela 14y ago

Great find. I had a similar issue with a dumb app I built a long time ago that was more of a learning experiment / sick joke than anything real. It was called Rubbed Out and the point was to list all of your friends you had thought about while masterbating. With bad permissions, or a small sample size, it gets really scary.

jnxfgf455 14y ago

Disgusting.

jgv 14y ago

lol yea thats the only problem with this app..

gizmo686 14y ago

I wonder what it would take to implement BangWithFriends with cryptographicly assured privacy. When I have the chance, I'll break open my crypto book and see if this problem is less impossible to solve than it seems.

CrazyGee 14y ago

I have just tried to join http://www.BangFriends.com http://www.BangFriends.com but it says i will receive an email shortly because they are still in BETA mode. Maybe they are adding the default privacy option so people cant monitor you on facebook via Open Graph?

bongs 14y ago

I agree, it is not anonymous. We created a version that is more suitable for Facebook - for people looking for serious relationships instead of casual encounters. http://www.PairBuddy.com http://www.PairBuddy.com We have got some good support in our beta launch.