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I founded a startup with dsebrow and jsebrow to try and address this issue. We let users have private and anonymous conversations with their friends and colleag
by nyellin 16y ago
I founded a startup with dsebrow and jsebrow to try and address this issue. We let users have private and anonymous conversations with their friends and colleagues, with a twist: you can see who is part of a conversation, but you can't see who made individual comments. In other words, you can have anonymous conversations with people who you respect. The trolls can't comment, because participation is invite-only.
There is a demo at http://freeversation.com/about/ http://freeversation.com/about/ but please don't excessively promote it or repost it to HN yet. We're not quite ready to go live. (Until this discussion hit the homepage, we weren't planning on allowing the public to access Freeversation.com until later this week.)
We will be applying for YCombinator.
- stcredzero 16y agoWere you thinking of Plato's Republic when you wrote this?
- nyellin 16y agoNo, do you mind explaining? Sorry if I am missing the obvious. It is late and I am tired.
- stcredzero 16y agoI'm referring to his idea that a perfect legislature could be formed if there was a way to make the representatives forget who they were while they were debating and voting. Then they'd have no choice but to vote for the common interest and not their own.
- TheEzEzz 16y agoWhat would happen if Senate votes weren't made public? It would decrease accountability of senators to constituents, sure, but would it also decrease the power of special interest groups?
- danssig 16y agoAnother way to fix this would be to make legalized bribery (the current US lobby system)... illegal.
- ajb 16y agoThat sounds like John Rawls 'veil of ignorance'. Are you sure it was in Plato?
- stcredzero 16y agoNo, it was not Plato. They are mentioned together in so many places, I had them mixed up. Plato is not about Democracy. It's Rawls.
- dsebrow 16y agoBut Plato is, actually, relevant to our site. The cave analogy is a perfect description of how we see current social discussion- people understand themselves and others by interacting with mere "shadows" that are not very substantive. Facebook lets you know who you're talking to, but profiles are often more about what that person wants to be seen as than about who he actually is. Our goal, conversely, is to let people strip away the superficial and discuss their real opinions in an unadulterated form.
- ilovecomputers 16y agoWell that might lead to awkward situations. Donny, Steven, Eric, and Bob have joined the Freeversation Anon: "Hey guys how's it going." Anon2: "Donny cheated with Mary." Anon: "Okay, who said that?" Anon: "Eric it was you wasn't it?" Anon2: "Donny also stole booze from last nights party." Anon: "I will find out who this is." Full disclosure: I don't know how bros talk, but I can see Freeversations leading to confessions or straight out bashing. Best to lay down some etiquette for new users.
- nyellin 16y agoWe're planning on adding some moderation options, but we also trust our users. You get to decide who to invite to a conversation, so presumably you won't invite someone who is going to make a joke out of a serious discussion. If people don't live up to our expectations, we do have some creative solutions for encouraging people to behave.
- adrianwaj 16y agoGood luck buddy.
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoHave you actually tried this with a couple of friends? I'd expect to be able to pick out who's who fairly quickly... I do think it's a nice idea; but I would still be very careful saying anything serious on there.
- dsebrow 16y agoPartly for that reason, we envision the site as being most useful for groups above 20 and below 200. That way you have less of a risk of identifying specific users, while still developing a sense of community and relevance.
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoAh ok, that makes more sense. Will you assign the same alias to the same user every time, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identicon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identicon? That'd allow some kind of reputation system, at the cost of making it even easier to de-anonymize users.
- nyellin 16y agoAs of now, users do not have persistent identities. Depending on how Freeversation develops, we may eventually let users opt-in for such aliases.