
Whispererly - wilozxc
http://whispererly.weebly.com/
======
mumphster
I made something similar to this (it was an Irc bot that allowed tweeting via
a command on a fairly large channel) and got shut down, my host subpoenaed
(Linode at the time) and eventually got a visit from law enforcement at my
house due to people sending abusive tweets. Just a heads up, I would add
moderation sooner than later.

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JacobEdelman
Wait, do they track who says what themselves?
[https://twitter.com/whispererly/status/615513760107732996](https://twitter.com/whispererly/status/615513760107732996)

~~~
giancarlostoro
Judging by the fact you have to DM "to get send anonymous messages" (as per
their profile description on Twitter) I would suggest it's not that hard to
track in the event they need to report the end-user to law enforcement.

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wilozxc
That is NOT a tweet we wrote but an anonymous one by someone we do not know!

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wilozxc
Whispererly is a twitter bot that allows you to send anonymous tweets by
simply direct messaging it your tweets!

The bot can be used to joke around, express political views, give feedback to
you're friends or any else you want it to be used for. We already have close
to 200 tweets in the past two days and can't wait for what the Hacker News
community comes up with!

Test it out, and if you have any questions or suggestions feel free to drop
them in here.

~~~
swombat
Pretty obvious to the HN community, but perhaps worth making it obvious before
this becomes a public thing that this is definitely not even remotely law-
enforcement proof, just in case someone thinks of using this to tweet
something illegal. You know it's only a matter of time...

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biaxident
With all the existing issues with abuse on twitter won't this just acerbate
the problem?

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jarcane
Yes.

I would say I'm shocked anyone thought this was a good idea, but I'm not,
sadly.

Privileged nerds seem perpetually oblivious of any problem that doesn't
personally harm them.

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icebraining
Has abuse actually happened? Have you considered that the author might have
actually thought about it? Hurray for pre-condemnation.

~~~
jarcane
It's called forethought.

I know that doesn't fit well with the whole "move fast, break stuff" attitude
in SV, but then, tech people usually aren't the ones being broken.

~~~
icebraining
Again, how do you actually know the author hasn't thought about it? I'm not
praising the attitude your referring to, I'm criticizing your prejudices
against the author, the baseless assumption that (s)he fits the label of
"oblivious privileged SV tech nerd" you've decided to attribute.

~~~
jarcane
If it takes you more than 30 seconds to come to "An app that allows anonymous
public messages on a social network currently wracked by abuse is not a good
idea", you haven't been thinking.

~~~
icebraining
I think you're confusing "anonymous" with "uncensored". Nothing prevents these
messages from being filtered for abuse.

Not to mention that being a single account, and hence easily blocked, the
potential for abuse is minimal compared to the alternative of simply creating
a new Twitter account, which would be just as anonymous.

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freebs
I thought about this a while back. I'd imagine it would be better to not use
DMs and just have them create an account on your site so as to not tie them
together. I had thoughts about twitter eventually banning the account, so
you'd probably need an account creation script (possibly use the handle of the
account being mentioned plus _w added to the end). It would also be a good
idea to add language filtering and check the tweet against a database of
abusive words so as to really slow down the abuse. I thought about this as an
employee feedback tool at first, but everyone could use a little anonymous
constructive feedback. Keep at it, many of the problems can be solved with a
little creativity. Good luck :D

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facepalm
Doesn't Twitter ban you if you send too many @-messages to random people?

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martin-adams
I wonder where this would stand if the app was used for cyber bullying or some
kind of threat?

Side note, typo in the footer comment on the homepage. "creat" rather than
"create".

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wilozxc
For cool secret features of the bot and some more information -
[https://medium.com/@Go_Soroush/introducing-
whispererly-705f6...](https://medium.com/@Go_Soroush/introducing-
whispererly-705f627660d8)

~~~
hndl
Typo: "Not only will know one know who it was but you will be hidden behind a
random animal! This is our way of guarantying 100% anonymity."

~~~
ablation
I would be careful about "guaranteeing 100% anonymity" too. I think that would
very quickly not be the case should law enforcement get involved after your
service is used to send threatening messages to someone it shouldn't.

~~~
mumphster
Ya pretty much don't ever use this app if you actually want to be anonymous.
DM's are logged and I really doubt the author would not comply if the Feds
came knocking.

~~~
iisbum
It would not even be up to the author, Twitter would have the data and could
provide this to authorities.

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kissickas
What's with using *ly names that aren't on a .ly domain? I'm extremely likely,
especially with a long and somewhat contrived name like whisperer-ly, to
misremember the web address if it's a faux .ly.

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m4xim3d
Very fun, do you plan to let user choose which anonymous animal will whisper
it's tweet ? I don't trust anonymous chipmunks ;)

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wilozxc
What animal would you choose?

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m4xim3d
Unicorn obviously :)

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wilozxc
It is one of the options!

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oelmekki
That can be fun :) How do you plan to moderate it?

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wilozxc
I do have plans and ways of moderating in place but, for now I want to see
what the community can do with it!

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oelmekki
Sounds reasonable :) We too often build restrictions before even being sure we
actually need them.

~~~
wilozxc
Always good to be precautions!

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kitd
Anonymity seems to appeal most to the dregs of society. Whatever the
intentions of the developers, I honestly can't see this ending well.

~~~
Grue3
Well said, "kitd".

~~~
kitd
A username isn't the same as anonymity. You can look through my comment
history (and as it happens get a pretty good idea of what I do and where I
come from). And my username relates pretty closely to my real name. That isn't
much protection of my identity.

Total anonymity (no username, no identity) opens the door for anyone to say
anything. In some cases that's good. But IME, it is a benefit that ia mainly
used by the dregs .

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confiscate
maybe change the name of the product? it's quite easy to confuse this with
"whisper", which is also another anonymous product.

obviously whisper and whisperly are different, but it takes some mental effort
to separate them, which is not good for branding

