
Show HN: Anonymous Discussion Platform For Any Topic (think Reddit meets Slack) - _aaya
https://hashtags.chat
======
rotrux
This was an unfortunate experience despite having potential. Great example of
the 2-sided nature of mass-anonymity.

~~~
_aaya
Yeah 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
I 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.

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_aaya
Hmm 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.

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rotrux
I 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.

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_aaya
Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Maybe it's due to lack of experience, but I guess I didn't consider adoption
from a business perspective when designing the initial experience.

Do you think a separate landing page or series of blog posts on Medium could
lead to a better first impression? That way I could direct new users to
specific tags and bypass the default channel altogether.

~~~
rotrux
So one thing I do like about the landing page is how it shows the constant
activity on the website. But oh how treacherous & subtle an art it is catering
to the lizard-brain! Imagine blackjack, but where 17, 18, 19, & 20 are all
busts (in addition to anything over 21.)

Maybe you could create an overlay that pops up on the users 1st visit (that
said everyone hated Clippy...overlays can be really annoying depending on how
cumbersome they are.

Or maybe you could divide the landing page in half? One side being the
constant stream, the other being...something more high-level? Like maybe
buttons to take you to different tag-channels? a list of top tags & real-time
post counts for each? Not really sure here; all subjective opinions of mine &
liable to be bad.

~~~
_aaya
Thank you--you've given me a lot to think about over the next few days before
I decide what tradeoffs to make.

I really appreciate your feedback because you're approaching this from a
perspective I hadn't considered.

If you're interested in my thought process going into this project, I've
gathered my thoughts in a short Medium post:

[https://medium.com/@hashtags_chat/online-communication-
and-t...](https://medium.com/@hashtags_chat/online-communication-and-the-
merits-of-anonymous-discussion-platforms-988d263d9c2c)

~~~
rotrux
Really good read; I especially like:

"With written content, we instinctively frame our engagement in terms of the
individual behind the content rather than the content itself. And I think this
is the reason behind much of the undesirable behavior we find on platforms
where we use words to express our ideas."

Excited to see where you take the platform!

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AlbertoGP
Given 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)

~~~
_aaya
Wow that looks pretty cool

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igorgue
Yeah, and useful! Maybe an alternative view?

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_aaya
Yep, I'll experiment with it this weekend!

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curiousgal
Soo..IRC?

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penpapersw
Nope. On IRC you get to choose your nickname.

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sixdimensional
If you don't mind sharing - what kind of equipment/stack is it deployed on,
and how is it keeping up with the HN load?

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zython
From what I can tell, the stack is based on node with express and react.

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tyrw
I 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.

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_aaya
The concept I was going for is discussion without identities. Maybe anonymity
wasn't the right word.

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micaksica
Pseudonymity is probably the better term.

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quacker
"Anonymous" is the right word, imo. "Pseudonymity" implies having a nickname
(a pseudonym), which is not required to participate.

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Jazgot
It is unusable on mobile

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_aaya
Yeah, sorry about that. For now it's only for desktop, but if there's
interest, I'll look into making mobile apps.

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Jazgot
Just give the ability to hide side bar, that should be enough for the
beginning :)

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_aaya
You can click the icons on the side to show/hide the sidebar - sorry I haven't
published all the features and how to use them.

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Jazgot
That's handy, now much better. Thank you!

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glitch003
This 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
Thanks! Glad you find it fun~

I'll look into different highlight colors and other ways to improve the UX.

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mirekrusin
Hungs for everybody when people start sending quick messages (and everybody
copies)

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_aaya
I 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.

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lauretas
What 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...

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notheguyouthink
Does 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?

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lauretas
If 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.

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kwhitefoot
Too 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
Thanks 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.

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DerfNet
cool 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
Thanks! And yeah, I definitely need to look more into filters.

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stockkid
Looks solid. Did you use any existing frameworks for building a chat platform,
or did you write it from scratch?

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_aaya
Thanks!

I used firebase for the back end which made the implementation pretty
straightforward.

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cranjice
need to implement basic rate limiting... it's a spamfest in there

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dvcc
It all started with the simple question of, "I wonder if there is any spam
protection?".

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gandutraveler
Yahoo chat rooms

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niahmiah
Anonymity kills. See Yik Yak.

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kvcrawford
Didn't Yik Yak die when they started eliminating anonymity?

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tdb7893
In my memory they were dying before that but that might just have been my
area.

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evbots
so....AOL chatrooms?

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ijafri
No private rooms?

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_aaya
Everything 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.

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ijafri
Why not let everyone moderate or delete it's temporary, but one should be able
to delete too.

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_aaya
I decided not to include editing or deleting to encourage users to think a
little bit before sending a message.

