6 ms·

What I Learned from Creating a High School Social Network

132 points by jsrmath 11y ago

Animats 11y ago
Somebody get this guy a YC appointment. He has the right idea, and needs to scale it up.
- blantonl 11y ago
  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.
  - kedean 11y ago
    One could avoid privacy issues by not collecting any information outside of email and chats, I would imagine. You don't HAVE to collect lots of user information. As for porn, why does a social network have to allow embedded images? If it's mainly a chat service, there's no risk. I suppose someone could use your network as transport for links to outside content, but that's pretty unlikely and it's a stretch to say the network is responsible at all. You could also disallow hyperlinking. Of course, both of those fixes make the system pretty damn hard to monetize, which I think is the biggest issue.
  - Animats 11y ago
    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
    - blantonl 11y ago
      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.
      - nl 11y ago
        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-draws-big-valuation-1416791097 http://www.wsj.com/articles/year-old-messaging-app-yik-yak-d... Perhaps you meant you disagree that valuation makes sense?
  - nl 11y ago
    Minecraft. The most valuable truths are the ones most people don't believe. They're like undervalued stocks. If you start with them, you'll have the whole field to yourself. So when you find an idea you know is good but most people disagree with, you should not merely ignore their objections, but push aggressively in that direction. http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html
  - personjerry 11y ago
    > * Privacy * Bullying * Under age pornography Although you seem to condemn college students, it seems as though your concerns are all solved by moving the target audience to colleges, because college students are "adult" enough that we don't care about these issues for them for the most part (with respect to laws). > Facebook, Instagram, Snapshat etc all struggle with this across their networks. Pretty sure they all started by being built on similar user bases, and it's a tremendously appealing audience to start an app with.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
rexpop 11y ago
Rad! Throw some sentiment analysis on that corpus and let your classmates know how they feel!
jpochtar 11y ago
Where can I join freshStart?
- joshmanders 11y ago
  Enroll in Hunter College High School.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
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").
- xiaoma 11y ago
  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!
  - e12e 11y ago
    A lot of people make a lot of money from writing terrible applications that [some people claim] solve a particular business need. I used to be shocked, now I'm just sad ;-) See also: http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2016/Jan/55 http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2016/Jan/55 [Full Disclosure: It essentially wins crypto vulnerability bingo! gilfether/phpcrypt]
  - elorant 11y ago
    I guess you've never heard of Sharepoint :)
    - nchelluri 11y ago
      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.
      - elorant 11y ago
        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.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
> 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.
- Others 11y ago
  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?
  - jsrmath 11y ago
    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.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - tahssa 11y ago
      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.
detaro 11y ago
What percentage of students used it?
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > I accumulated a total of over 500 registered users (out of about 800 9th-12th graders)
  - detaro 11y ago
    ok, apparently I can't read... Surprisingly high percentage, but I guess in such a relatively large group the negative effect of someone from that group having access to everything isn't as large as it would be in a smaller one. I don't think that would have working in my highschool, at least not without encryption and source code available...
  - amelius 11y ago
    #registered users != #active users Just saying.
  - VLM 11y ago
    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.
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      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.
refrigerator 11y ago
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.

132 points by jsrmath 11y ago

Animats 11y ago

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

blantonl 11y ago
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.
- kedean 11y ago
  One could avoid privacy issues by not collecting any information outside of email and chats, I would imagine. You don't HAVE to collect lots of user information. As for porn, why does a social network have to allow embedded images? If it's mainly a chat service, there's no risk. I suppose someone could use your network as transport for links to outside content, but that's pretty unlikely and it's a stretch to say the network is responsible at all. You could also disallow hyperlinking. Of course, both of those fixes make the system pretty damn hard to monetize, which I think is the biggest issue.
- Animats 11y ago
  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
  - blantonl 11y ago
    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.
    - nl 11y ago
      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-draws-big-valuation-1416791097 http://www.wsj.com/articles/year-old-messaging-app-yik-yak-d... Perhaps you meant you disagree that valuation makes sense?
- nl 11y ago
  Minecraft. The most valuable truths are the ones most people don't believe. They're like undervalued stocks. If you start with them, you'll have the whole field to yourself. So when you find an idea you know is good but most people disagree with, you should not merely ignore their objections, but push aggressively in that direction. http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html
- personjerry 11y ago
  > * Privacy * Bullying * Under age pornography Although you seem to condemn college students, it seems as though your concerns are all solved by moving the target audience to colleges, because college students are "adult" enough that we don't care about these issues for them for the most part (with respect to laws). > Facebook, Instagram, Snapshat etc all struggle with this across their networks. Pretty sure they all started by being built on similar user bases, and it's a tremendously appealing audience to start an app with.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

rexpop 11y ago

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

jpochtar 11y ago

Where can I join freshStart?

joshmanders 11y ago
Enroll in Hunter College High School.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

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").

xiaoma 11y ago
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!
- e12e 11y ago
  A lot of people make a lot of money from writing terrible applications that [some people claim] solve a particular business need. I used to be shocked, now I'm just sad ;-) See also: http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2016/Jan/55 http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2016/Jan/55 [Full Disclosure: It essentially wins crypto vulnerability bingo! gilfether/phpcrypt]
- elorant 11y ago
  I guess you've never heard of Sharepoint :)
  - nchelluri 11y ago
    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.
    - elorant 11y ago
      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.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

> 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.

Others 11y ago
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?
- jsrmath 11y ago
  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.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - tahssa 11y ago
    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.

detaro 11y ago

What percentage of students used it?

thaumasiotes 11y ago
> I accumulated a total of over 500 registered users (out of about 800 9th-12th graders)
- detaro 11y ago
  ok, apparently I can't read... Surprisingly high percentage, but I guess in such a relatively large group the negative effect of someone from that group having access to everything isn't as large as it would be in a smaller one. I don't think that would have working in my highschool, at least not without encryption and source code available...
- amelius 11y ago
  #registered users != #active users Just saying.
- VLM 11y ago
  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.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    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.

refrigerator 11y ago

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.