
What I Learned from Creating a High School Social Network - jsrmath
https://medium.com/@jsrmath/what-i-learned-from-creating-a-high-school-social-network-c37fcd0fb4b0#.na6ea4l99
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TazeTSchnitzel
I made a social network in middle school. Nobody used it, but that taught me
how to write terrible PHP applications.

With that same knowledge I made another social network ~2/3 years later for an
online community, and it worked better. Eventually I shut it down. In 2012 I
revived it and very quickly learned the value of not mixing your business and
presentation logic (refactoring the codebase to be maintainable was an
absolute chore), and of preventing XSS and XSRF (someone set their avatar to
the URL "/logout").

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xiaoma
A lot of people make a lot of money from writing terrible PHP applications
that solve a particular business need. Sometimes it's shocking to me to be
honest!

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elorant
I guess you've never heard of Sharepoint :)

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nchelluri
Tell me, what's that space like? Know it's a thing, (intranet sites or some
such?), but that's about it. Very curious about it, heard people make a lot in
there.

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elorant
I've heard of guys earning north of $150 per hour and the demand is quite
high. It's pretty big in the corporate world, back in 2011 78% of Fortune 500
companies were using it. It's an Intranet/Document management platform and it
collaborates with MS Office.

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TazeTSchnitzel
> If you were a high school senior and your schoolmates were handing you
> transcripts of all their juicy gossip on a silver, digital platter, what
> would you do?

If I was actually handed that info on a silver platter, willingly, then who
knows.

But that's not your situation. In your situation, I'd be violating the trust
of my entire school. That's neither a good idea ethically nor socially.

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Others
I think you are slightly misrepresenting the author. His sarcastic comment
about "bulletproof moral guidelines" seems to indicate that he isn't proud of
this particular moral transgression. And while I don't think he was right to
read the messages, you have to consider that the people using the service
literally had no idea who they were sending messages to. I think that makes it
a bit different from reading messages that were intended for one person that
the speaker knew well. Not that that excuses the behavior, but I do think it
explains some of the rationale. Also, who didn't make stupid immoral decisions
in high school?

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jsrmath
This is pretty accurate. tl;dr: What I did wasn't great but it could have been
a lot worse (see all the things I made it a point of not doing), and that
gives you something to think about when it comes to data and privacy.

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tahssa
Wow, that's a pretty unimpressive response. It's bad enough you did it, but I
seriously doubt you realize how wrong what you have done really is when you
discount that wrong doing so easily.

To make it clear: You advertised an anonymous service to a community you're a
direct member of and didn't disclose your involvement in it. You not only
willingly broke a moral code that you knew about, but you actually
misrepresented the service in your advertisement and broke any trust you had
with everyone who participated. That's a pretty serious wrong doing that
warrants a little more self reflection and much more empathy towards the
people you screwed over.

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Animats
Somebody get this guy a YC appointment. He has the right idea, and needs to
scale it up.

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blantonl
Scaling an anonymous social network targeted to high schoolers... I shudder at
the thought of the minefields you would be required to navigate.

* Privacy * Bullying * Under age pornography

Facebook, Instagram, Snapshat etc all struggle with this across their
networks.

Something designed for a user base that is almost exclusively under 18....
Shudder.

College students have trouble conducting themselves online in a proper fashion
- just look at Yik Yak and the headwinds it is facing.

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Animats
Such negativism. This is YC. Accentuate the positive, eliminate the
negative.[1] Yik Yak has a $400M valuation.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZUmAbi0Vm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZUmAbi0Vm4)

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blantonl
I tend to be skeptical at times. A 400m valuation for a local anonymous chat
application? Yup, I'm skeptical. Actually, I think it is ridiculous.

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nl
_A 400m valuation for a local anonymous chat application? Yup, I 'm
skeptical._

You'd be wrong.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/year-old-messaging-app-yik-
yak-d...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/year-old-messaging-app-yik-yak-draws-
big-valuation-1416791097)

Perhaps you meant you disagree that valuation makes sense?

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rexpop
Rad! Throw some sentiment analysis on that corpus and let your classmates know
how they feel!

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refrigerator
Great read! Really well written too. Kudos to you for being so open about
everything - I can't imagine many high schoolers would have written with as
much candour as you did in the "You ≠ your app" section.

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detaro
What percentage of students used it?

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thaumasiotes
> I accumulated a total of over 500 registered users (out of about 800
> 9th-12th graders)

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VLM
Technically its not "out of" because in the linked article:

"Hunter ID number (a number which I could validate but not easily trace to a
particular person)"

I'd read that as some minimal formatting and the correct number of digits and
you're in.

I suspect there were no small number of school admins, teachers, parents, ex
students, middle/grade school students, outright adult pedos, etc.

More like 500 registered users out of a billion internet users.

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thaumasiotes
He also points out (just a few words from the bit you quote) that virtually
everyone registered with an email address that included their name, so he knew
who everyone was.

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jpochtar
Where can I join freshStart?

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joshmanders
Enroll in Hunter College High School.

