

Show HN: TrollBlock, It's Okay to Dislike - bretthardin
http://trollblock.com

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fragsworth
I don't know about others, but anything that requires me to log in with
Facebook ends up stopping me from using it because I don't want all my
contacts to see that I signed up for it.

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bretthardin
fragsworth. We will implement other logins soon. This was just an MVP and we
wanted to have something "in the real world" to avoid people posting racist
items.

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gm
I think you forgot the "V" in MVP... If we are free to be assholes in the
social network and say what we really think ('cuz we are all assholes deep
inside :-) ), the very last thing I want to do is tie it to my real-life
account on FB.

Easy for you guys to implement, yes. "Viable"? I think not.

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riffraff
not sure if they implemented this in this mv?p but there is a trivial and at
the same time incredibly unused solution: just add a checkbox "post
anonimously" next to every interaction form.

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elliottcarlson
It sounds interesting, however the dependency on Facebook makes me not want to
even try it. What about it requires Facebook integration?

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bretthardin
We just needed it for faster integration. And we want to steal market share
from FB. :)

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StavrosK
Try BrowserID, it has the fastest integration I've ever used (this is with
django).

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bretthardin
Great idea. We may integrate that into the system in the next day or so.

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dlevine
I was thinking that this was going to be a filter on HN that blocked the
comments by people you didn't like. That would be kind of a cool project.
Basically, you could click "hide" and no longer see comments by a particular
person. Over time, it could use clustering and machine learning to decide
which comments you should see.

~~~
_delirium
someday I hope the progress of technology will bring us back up to the level
of 1980s killfiles ;-)

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InclinedPlane
Much like the aphorism about all sufficiently complex programs effectively
striving to re-implement Lisp, I think all sufficiently complex social sites
are effectively striving to re-create usenet in its heyday.

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MichaelApproved
I see a list of "Most disliked users" and "Most blocked users" once I'm logged
in. That seems like this is going to be a competition to be blocked with
people intentionally acting like trolls. I wouldn't want to spend time on the
site if that's what ends up happening.

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bretthardin
Michael, agreed. After you block people, the firehouse becomes more
consumable. It was built in 30 hours. We will figure out better "games" in the
future.

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MichaelApproved
Yes, don't get me wrong, I like the idea of blocking people and understand the
stage of development. I created an account and would like to participate. My
feedback is not to encourage trolling. I'd like to see a system that rewards
the person with the best message/block ratio.

Good luck with the project. I look forward to seeing it grow.

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bretthardin
Startup Weekend Project!

Reason you should use it? By default you receive everyones posts. It's up to
you to block who and what you don't want to see.

Check it out! Thanks.

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Finbarr
We built this during Startup Weekend San Jose this weekend. It's built on
node.js, socket.io, mongodb, redis and knockoutjs on the front end. Check it
out - social networking in reverse!

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notatoad
mongo and redis - aren't both of those designed to serve basically the same
purpose? why both?

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Finbarr
Well, I used redis to hold a few sets for each user. You can atomically add
items to sets in redis. Mongodb doesn't support this functionality (AFAIK).
MongoDB is great for dumping and retrieving lots of data and is more durable
than redis. Haven't built a site using these tools before so has all been a
learning experience.

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mathias_10gen
Take a look at the $push and $addToSet[1] update operators in mongodb. They
are both for atomically adding one or more elements to an array in an object.
On the other hand, MongoDB doesn't support server-side set union or
intersection so if you are using those features redis would still probably be
a good use there.

[1]
[http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Updating#Updating-%24add...](http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Updating#Updating-%24addToSetand%24each)

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gsivil
The way your HN title is written it makes your project look like a fb plug in
or somthing. You may be more direct in what is your interesting project about.

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malkia
Other attempts from the past: <http://fiendster.com>

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werdnanoslen
I feel like this is exactly what's going on with the HN G+ circle. About 80%
are reposters, who I immediately remove from circles, about 15% post
interesting stuff, and about 5% are just people sort of worth following like
Linus Torvalds and Richard Branson.

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courtewing
I would definitely try it if for no other reason than the novelty. But I don't
enjoy logging into facebook to check facebook... much less logging into
facebook to check some other social networking site.

Cool idea, though.

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cwilson
This is a case where using Bootstrap didn't help them with having a clean
design out of the gate.

I like the idea, but there is pretty much no way I'm going to authenticate
with Facebook, simply because it looks so unprofessional and ugly.

A few simple changes, like not using the purple on grey, not using the color
pink at all (there are lots of sites that will help you generate a good color
pallet), and being more consistent with your padding between rows, would go a
long way.

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Finbarr
I'm afraid designers were few and far between at the SWSJ event and we didn't
have one on the team.

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irollboozers
I actually think this solves some serious problems.

I think most non-trolls don't realize how powerful the 'dislike' button is.
With a like or upvote button, you don't do anything by way of separating
trolls from real content. That's what the 'no' is for, and websites shouldn't
be afraid of that.

Seriously, from here on out it should rapid cross-platform expansion. I'm
looking at you, Youtube.

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Turing_Machine
I like the idea, and tried to share the site on Facebook. For some reason it
came out with just the link and no descriptive text (usually you get the first
few sentences from the page, which you can then edit). Something in the way
the code is being generated, maybe?

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gravitronic
Maybe if they have a blank meta description HTML tag?

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bretthardin
Yeah, we didn't right a meta tag... On the to do list.

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elisee
If you want a proper thumbnail & description when people share your site on
Facebook, consider using the Open Graph meta tags starting with "og:" which
Facebook parses: <https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/objects/>

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pud
Just FYI - site appears to be down at the moment. Overloaded?

Confirmed by <http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/trollblock.com>

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Finbarr
There have been intermittent issues. I was driving home from SWSJ and unable
to deal with it for around an hour earlier this evening. Trying to fix a few
bugs in the code now.

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Forrest7778
I think it would be funny if you started out blocked by everyone since you are
the owner, sort of a joke at Tom from Myspace.

And that's an interested idea, how do you think user growth will affect this
model?

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bretthardin
No idea. We are playing with it and figure it out.

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MichaelApproved
Maybe you can get an initial block of 100 people to follow and have a "Give me
100 new friends" button which gives the user another 100 random people to
follow.

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wyclif
Heads up: remove the comma between "are friends" and "with everyone."

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MichaelApproved
I think they wanted to add it for a dramatic pause. Maybe an ellipsis would
work better. "As soon as you start using TrollBlock you are friends... with
everyone."

This reminds me of the Professional where Gary Oldman says "Bring me everyone.
EVERYONE." <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB_deAcoC2I>

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fragsworth
Then a hyphen would be better:

"As soon as you start using TrollBlock you are friends - with everyone."

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philwelch
Actually that situation calls for an em dash.

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joshbaptiste
Misspelling on front page with "consantly"..

"The content that you see is consantly changing based on who is using
TrollBlock"

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bretthardin
Thanks. I am a pretty bad speeler. :) Will fix it soon.

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Alex3917
After reading the front page, it's not obvious to me why anyone would use
this. What is the use case you had in mind?

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bretthardin
Hardest part about social networks is getting people you know on this site.
With this, everyone is your friend to start with.

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coryl
And yet you know none of the people...?

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pilgrim689
I'm guessing you'd get to know them by their posts, and day by day eliminate
the ones you don't really want to hear about... would be cool if when you
dislike they just appear less often, so there is no need to block

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DesignerJoel
Interesting idea, I'll definitely try it once I can login some other way.

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ponyous
HN effect? Site is down.

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jvrossb
I think it's hilarious and I'm proud to link it to FB :)

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drp4929
Finally!

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codingstaff
Guys, don't listent to wrong feedback coming out of... whatever. Trollblock is
an awesome resource for trolling and you should stick to that idea. Comments
should be hella funny and yeah, keep the facebook login. Otherwise u'll have a
bunch of weirdo nazis screaming out loud. Cool stuff!

