
Show HN: Vigyaa Anonymous – A safe place to write and read anonymously - goelgarry1980
http://Vigyaa.io
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jborichevskiy
A hunch: I think anonymous writing today (by those with more non-anonymous
writing) will be reliably de-anonymized relatively soon through some sort of
comparative analysis by a motivated enough party.

It feels like writing needs an additional layer of obfuscation. For example,
one way to give feedback in a small circle of people might be to have a
neutral, anonymous third-party rephrase the idea in their own words -- a bit
like running it through Google Translate but less deterministic.

This sort of feature could potentially be baked into a service, as a checkbox.
Perhaps in order to post you have to "anonymize" n number of other users'
posts first.

Some further reading:

[https://33bits.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/is-writing-style-
suf...](https://33bits.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/is-writing-style-sufficient-
to-deanonymize-material-posted-online/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylometry)

~~~
goelgarry1980
Thank you for your suggestions and suggested reads. Though I think the
incentive to de-anonymise or get into stylometry is there only if the post has
a larger impact on an organisation or individual. Most of the post on
Vigyaa.io are personal in nature. I don't see why anyone will make the effort
to figure out who has written it. The whole obfuscation is necesarry if one is
blowing the whistle on someone or is posting something offensive. In either
case the author will make their own effort to not let their writing style
reveal themselves.

Would love to hear your prospective further.

~~~
jborichevskiy
> The whole obfuscation is necesarry if one is blowing the whistle on someone
> or is posting something offensive.

Agreed -- I don't think personal posts need the anonymization as much as
perhaps political discussions in oppressive regimes (at which point getting
the technical security stack right seems higher ROI than worrying about de-
anonymization).

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gnabgib
How do you plan to moderate this? I notice there's a report button, but does
that lead to a manual process for you? How do you plan to scale that? 10K
articles is already sizable!

For a site that claims no IP tracking, the constant callbacks (to
/api/api/analytics..., some of which include a parameter `unique_id`) and the
inclusion of googletagmanager make me a little uneasy.

~~~
goelgarry1980
The callbacks and unique ID etc we will work on to help protect user
information.

The report function is automatic after a sizeable number reports and article.
Rest we do manual moderation and are working on NLP to automate. Thank you

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DoreenMichele
Just a word of warning: Anonymity while writing honestly is harder than people
typically think. You may need to develop some best practices to help people
actually be anonymous while writing "anonymously."

People are generally pretty oblivious to the many things they say and do that
can point to their real identity.

~~~
goelgarry1980
Noted thanx

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goelgarry1980
Vigyaa.io is a 100% anonymous platform where there are absolutely no trace of
your identity. So users can be free of any fear of judgment or vulnerability.

I watched a movie called "Dear God" a long time ago. A crook is sentenced to
serve the community by working in the post office sorting room. He finds a
pile of mails addressed to God. He starts to read them. That Idea stuck with
me since.

Here is the link to the IMDB page of the movie:
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116059/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116059/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0)

So Vigyaa.io is a digital incarnation of that idea. User is 100% anonymous.
Anonymity takes away all the vanity of presenting your best version to the
world. It makes you comfortable in your own skin. It rips away any kind of
incentive for you to fake it. And thus you get to see the TRUE version of the
people who post. I believe that it is a very rare thing in today's social
media lead world.

The stories you find on our platform are so honest that it has become a one of
a kind place where anyone can share anything that they are not comfortable
sharing with another sole until now.

We moderate the content for any kind of spamming/ solicitation posts or that
can be hurtful to any segment of the larger community. If we miss anything
that is still offensive users can report such posts and we have them removed.

Our only goal here is to unburden your hearts and have a place to connect with
humanity at large.

Please try it out and share your feedback. Ask questions. I will try to answer
to my best.

~~~
wruza
>you get to see the TRUE version of the people who post

It is a great idea, no doubt, given how tiny is a step from free speech to
public outrage with personal consequences today. Real values are important, as
are discussions on these. But sadly you get to see true version of not all
people, but mostly people who constitute a core mindset of those who prefer to
be anonymous. And that attracts a much more specific population and mood than
in general.

Maybe you're sure you know what you're doing, and I wish vigyaa good luck not
turning into a version of altchan, dickroulette and many other sites with
initially nice ideas of usage.

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wruza
It's not a safe place for your mind being on though. At the time being, it is
an usual, textbook aib content without images. If you look for places that
could reduce your depression or fear of being stalked, _do not_ consider
anonymous boards. You'll get a huge loads of depression, products of mental
illness, twisted worldviews, thinking errors and outright engineered posts
than will put your own mental health in danger if consumed regularly. It's no
safe place, because once you're hooked in, you're exposed to everything there
and you cannot control that. It's tempting to separate "you" and your identity
and integrity by hiding your name or username, but it's _you_ who is there,
not your username. It is like saying "okay, the world is scary and I will live
in a simulation game where nobody knows who I am". The problem with that
thinking is that now you live there and all your issues are still with you.

Also, as others pointed out itt, the problem with anonymity and
deanonymisation is not in ip addresses or similar technical trails. To be
anonymous, you have to check what you speak of on anonymous board and irl
constantly, and which information you disclose, either consciously or in small
details. Many slow aib users can recognize each other just by a little amount
of text. You can also never know whether your readers could do A+B+C of your
story or a comment and recognize you or someone from your environment irl.
Your life is unique enough to do that, even if all you do is sitting before
the screen all the time. I'd suggest to lurk for few years before getting out
of readonly to evaluate your ability to stay anonymous, but only if there was
something to do there in the first place.

It is also funny that it is called safe, when all you need to detect who said
what at the legal level is your isp's metadata.

~~~
goelgarry1980
I get your point about spiralling down depression reading the posts there. We
aim to segregate such posts using NLP so they don't crowd the center stage.
But we can't and dont want to stop such posts as venting helps these people.
And then there are many frequent users now that spend time helping other
through reply posts.

ISP point noted and will see what we can do about that.

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Andrew_nenakhov
_" Something Went Wrong!!! Please Try again"_ messages make it totally
unusable. Not even a second after opening any post, bam: _" Something Went
Wrong!!! Please Try again"_

After trying for some time and reloading a page like 5 times, honestly, I
don't think I'll try again.

~~~
eggsbenedict
Same experience. What's the point of a message board where you can't read the
posts?

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zatel
I think this looks great, I definitely will want to use it. I tried to read
some of the popular posts and found a small bug:

When you are on a post page (like [https://vigyaa.io/sadness-is-
confusing-86b8c139/](https://vigyaa.io/sadness-is-confusing-86b8c139/)) it
loads the content of the page and you can scroll and everything but then after
a few seconds it switches to "Something Went Wrong!!! Please Try again".

Watching it happen with the console open this error comes out when it fails:

TypeError: NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource.

I'm still excited to use Vigyaa, worts and all!

~~~
goelgarry1980
Thank you. Will have it fixed.

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boojums
Anonymous communication is interesting. It is nice to see another project in
this space. Like some of the other commenters, I am curious how the moderation
will work. Without IP address logs or user accounts it seems hard to ban
malicious users. Since one can reply to posts, I imagine the moderation will
be main difference from something like 4chan (also no images). I also wonder
what the monetization strategy is. Finally, I am curious about what the name
means.

~~~
goelgarry1980
Thank you for your comments. The moderation is currently manual and a manual
moderation layer will always remain. plus we have a "report abuse" button for
user supported moderation. 3rd we are also developing a NLP module that will
be able to fish out anything offensive. Since we don't want to keep IP address
logs we can target content directly. Any advise on that is welcome.

On monetisation: we will relay on ads and sponsored posts that are relevant to
the audience.

Vigyaa means "knowledge"

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scott31
"The Only Platform Where You can be 100% Anonymous" [citation needed]

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jets_81
I checked your platform, its a great idea, especially for someone like me
who's a great introvert and has a fear how people will judge me.

Good Work!

~~~
goelgarry1980
Thank you for your encouragement. I am an introvert too. And don't like to put
my feelings on display. I feel that is just a stunt to seek attention. But
here you can't seek any attention since know one knows who you are.

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jets_81
Use NLP for sentiment analysis

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xena
Not surprising that there's literal hate speech on the front page.

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eisisiiddjjssi
How old is this?

~~~
goelgarry1980
Launched April this year. The numbers are from June onwards

