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Thanks for submitting this, I was surprised to load HN and see it here. I've been meaning to do a proper update on what we've been up to for a while, but basica
by Alex3917 8y ago
Thanks for submitting this, I was surprised to load HN and see it here. I've been meaning to do a proper update on what we've been up to for a while, but basically things that we've done since launching:
- 99%+ of non-commercial email threads now parse correctly, better than Gmail in most cases. E.g. check out the inline reply parsing here: https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/Gb8CYKvGS6uFSXdb_hwiTA/blog-post-feedback-icos-cancer https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/Gb8CYKvGS6uFSXdb_hwiTA/blog-po...
- We now support oEmbed, so you can embed email directly within Reddit and Medium posts. And also within Confluence, your own site / blog, and hundreds of other places. C.f.: https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/87a7my/restaurants_worth_traveling_to_in_the_bronx/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/87a7my/restaurants_wor...
- The site now works really well on mobile and tablet.
- We've added organizations. Organizations can have public and private repositories. When publishing email to a public repository, by default permission request emails only go out to non-members of the organization. (And permission is never required to publish stuff to a private repository.)
- You can now anonymize any message contributor. Anonymized message contributors don't receive permission requests. Users can later anonymize or de-anonymize themselves at any point. (This works even if message contributors haven't yet created an account.)
- Threads are now SEO optimized. We basically take all the incoming garbage HTML that is modern email, and output it as really clean and minimalist HTML. (This also ensures that the redaction feature never breaks.)
- We now have pretty decent video tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwh9TJWoG6k&list=PLJAEYmnEjIu4--bpq5LSKZ9LS44po_NUx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwh9TJWoG6k&list=PLJAEYmnEjI...
- Users and organizations now have RSS feeds of their email, e.g.: https://api.fwdeveryone.com/user/inbox.atom?username=alex3917 https://api.fwdeveryone.com/user/inbox.atom?username=alex391...
- Lots of recirc features, e.g. trending threads.
New features in the pipeline:
- Permission requests are becoming optional, at least for now. Previously we required permission for all non-anonymized message contributors, now there will be an option to publish stuff immediately and let people anonymize themselves later if they want. If this is excessively abused we'll re-evaluate this, but we've tried to build things to incentivize good judgment.
- The front end is being completely re-written in React. Right now the front end loads in about 800ms, we're hoping to get it down to half that or less. (In comparison, the oEmbed loads in 80 - 130ms, hard to get much better without changing the speed of light.)
- We're building a Gmail plug-in. This will allow people to publish directly from their Gmail, and it won't require read-only access to the user's entire inbox. (Even though our privacy policy is very good!)
When we built the site we knew that no one needs or is looking for a new social network, so we figured that we aren't going to get many sign ups until people have read at least 100 really good threads on the site. We're not quite there yet, in terms of having enough content and traction for this to be a real business yet, but we're trending in the right direction and I'm hopeful we'll be close by the end of the year.
But yeah, overall we're basically just trying to make the Internet fun and weird again, the way I remember it when I was a kid but with a more modern twist. And also a real business model, no BS advertising, ever.
Also, for all the stuff that gets published about how addictive social networks are, try actually building one; nothing is more addictive (or inspiring) than a blank page.
- jonathankoren 8y ago> - You can now anonymize any message contributor. [...] > - Permission requests are becoming optional, at least for now. Previously we required permission for all non-anonymized message contributors, now there will be an option to publish stuff immediately and let people anonymize themselves later if they want. If this is excessively abused we'll re-evaluate this, but we've tried to build things to incentivize good judgment. This is a really an abuse of trust. When I send an email, I expect it to exist for a certain audience that's it. If I wanted it to be public, I would have posted it on a public forum. It's not up to the recipient to decide what should be done with my content. I'm the one that decides that. If you want to get legal about it, as the author, the copyright is mine, not the person I send it to. Not only are you running afoul of privacy, and abuse issues, you're running afoul of legal issues. This is a really abusive idea.
- ydushyant 8y agoI concur! I don't understand, why was there a need of such services anyway...
- oblio 8y ago> If you want to get legal about it, as the author, the copyright is mine, not the person I send it to. Are you sure about this? I doubt that communication can be copyrighted. Once you sent me your email, it's mine, not yours. Otherwise email forwarding in general is completely illegal.
- pluma 8y agoThis may depend on your jurisdiction but I'm 99% sure this isn't how things work in Germany. First of all, the author retains ownership of the copyright. They can freely redistribute copies of what they have written unless they're subject to an active contract limiting their use of those rights (e.g. a time-limited exclusive license -- IANAL but AIUI there is no such thing as a permanent exclusive license unless you also get perpetually reimbursed). So if you're sent a copyrighted work by its author, you may legitimately infer that you have the right to access it but you don't have the right to republish it or make copies accessible in any commercial way (like an ad-sponsored online platform). Additionally communications are subject to privacy laws. So you may be in violation of the author's personal rights even if you publish their e-mails non-commercially because you violate their "reasonable expectation of privacy". This is not entirely dissimilar to the case of "revenge porn" by the way: if you send your loved one an intimate picture for private use, you can not only ask that they destroy the picture at any point but they are also prohibited from publishing it without your approval. Of course in this case the violation of personal rights also stems from the fact the photo is a depiction of the author. But if you really need a clear example, imagine you are sent the draft of the next Game of Thrones season (or what have you) by its author. Unless you have explicit permission, you have no reason to assume you would then be allowed to go on and publish that document. Even without an NDA there's likely a "reasonable expectation" you will treat it as confidential and you'd be in violation of that by passing it on. Note that I'm talking about my understanding of German (and likely by extension EU) laws, not necessarily American laws. I'm well aware the US has different laws and I suspect those might vary on state level too.