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Show HN: TrollBlock, It's Okay to Dislike
- bretthardin 15y agoStartup Weekend Project! Reason you should use it? By default you receive everyones posts. It's up to you to block who and what you don't want to see. Check it out! Thanks.
- Finbarr 15y agoWe built this during Startup Weekend San Jose this weekend. It's built on node.js, socket.io, mongodb, redis and knockoutjs on the front end. Check it out - social networking in reverse!
- notatoad 15y agomongo and redis - aren't both of those designed to serve basically the same purpose? why both?
- Finbarr 15y agoWell, I used redis to hold a few sets for each user. You can atomically add items to sets in redis. Mongodb doesn't support this functionality (AFAIK). MongoDB is great for dumping and retrieving lots of data and is more durable than redis. Haven't built a site using these tools before so has all been a learning experience.
- pork 15y agoRedis now uses the same journaling for durability that Mongo does. What you get with Redis is complex atomic ops and transactions, but at the cost of not having sharding.
- mathias_10gen 15y agoTake a look at the $push and $addToSet[1] update operators in mongodb. They are both for atomically adding one or more elements to an array in an object. On the other hand, MongoDB doesn't support server-side set union or intersection so if you are using those features redis would still probably be a good use there. [1] http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Updating#Updating-%24addToSetand%24each http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Updating#Updating-%24add...
- Forrest7778 15y agoI think it would be funny if you started out blocked by everyone since you are the owner, sort of a joke at Tom from Myspace. And that's an interested idea, how do you think user growth will affect this model?
- bretthardin 15y agoNo idea. We are playing with it and figure it out.
- MichaelApproved 15y agoMaybe you can get an initial block of 100 people to follow and have a "Give me 100 new friends" button which gives the user another 100 random people to follow.
- gsivil 15y agoThe way your HN title is written it makes your project look like a fb plug in or somthing. You may be more direct in what is your interesting project about.
- elliottcarlson 15y agoIt sounds interesting, however the dependency on Facebook makes me not want to even try it. What about it requires Facebook integration?
- bretthardin 15y agoWe just needed it for faster integration. And we want to steal market share from FB. :)
- StavrosK 15y agoTry BrowserID, it has the fastest integration I've ever used (this is with django).
- bretthardin 15y agoGreat idea. We may integrate that into the system in the next day or so.
- JulianMorrison 15y agoThis seems to be the theory https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Identity/VerifiedEmailProtocol https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Identity/VerifiedEmailProtocol Can any HN folk comment on the quality of security this provides?
- SquareWheel 15y agoHeck, I don't even like using services with a Facebook button.
- atomicdog 15y agoBut without a "Like" button, how else will you communicate to the world that you cry every time you read the story?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- drp4929 15y agoFinally!
- courtewing 15y agoI would definitely try it if for no other reason than the novelty. But I don't enjoy logging into facebook to check facebook... much less logging into facebook to check some other social networking site. Cool idea, though.
- Turing_Machine 15y agoI like the idea, and tried to share the site on Facebook. For some reason it came out with just the link and no descriptive text (usually you get the first few sentences from the page, which you can then edit). Something in the way the code is being generated, maybe?
- gravitronic 15y agoMaybe if they have a blank meta description HTML tag?
- bretthardin 15y agoYeah, we didn't right a meta tag... On the to do list.
- wyclif 15y agoYes, you need to make that "Like" convert to a nice meta tag and full description, with the trollface thumbnail.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- elisee 15y agoIf you want a proper thumbnail & description when people share your site on Facebook, consider using the Open Graph meta tags starting with "og:" which Facebook parses: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/objects/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/objects/
- joshbaptiste 15y agoMisspelling on front page with "consantly".. "The content that you see is consantly changing based on who is using TrollBlock"
- bretthardin 15y agoThanks. I am a pretty bad speeler. :) Will fix it soon.
- Alex3917 15y agoAfter reading the front page, it's not obvious to me why anyone would use this. What is the use case you had in mind?
- bretthardin 15y agoHardest part about social networks is getting people you know on this site. With this, everyone is your friend to start with.
- coryl 15y agoAnd yet you know none of the people...?
- pilgrim689 15y agoI'm guessing you'd get to know them by their posts, and day by day eliminate the ones you don't really want to hear about... would be cool if when you dislike they just appear less often, so there is no need to block
- nluqo 15y agoI wonder if this would be useful for mitigating effects of the filter bubble: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble Right off the bat though I have a problem conceptually. If this is at all analogous to Facebook (and perhaps it is not), the onus is now on me to block hundreds of millions of users instead of adding a few hundred. What you could do instead is to block groups of users based on the type of content they share. In this model it's like what stumbleupon would be with only a thumbs down option. And I could see that being a really great way to learn about new interests you would never find otherwise.
- wyclif 15y agoHeads up: remove the comma between "are friends" and "with everyone."
- MichaelApproved 15y agoI think they wanted to add it for a dramatic pause. Maybe an ellipsis would work better. "As soon as you start using TrollBlock you are friends... with everyone." This reminds me of the Professional where Gary Oldman says "Bring me everyone. EVERYONE." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB_deAcoC2I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB_deAcoC2I
- fragsworth 15y agoThen a hyphen would be better: "As soon as you start using TrollBlock you are friends - with everyone."
- philwelch 15y agoActually that situation calls for an em dash.
- bretthardin 15y agoAdded Elipses for dramatic pause!
- MichaelApproved 15y agoI see a list of "Most disliked users" and "Most blocked users" once I'm logged in. That seems like this is going to be a competition to be blocked with people intentionally acting like trolls. I wouldn't want to spend time on the site if that's what ends up happening.
- bretthardin 15y agoMichael, agreed. After you block people, the firehouse becomes more consumable. It was built in 30 hours. We will figure out better "games" in the future.
- MichaelApproved 15y agoYes, don't get me wrong, I like the idea of blocking people and understand the stage of development. I created an account and would like to participate. My feedback is not to encourage trolling. I'd like to see a system that rewards the person with the best message/block ratio. Good luck with the project. I look forward to seeing it grow.
- fragsworth 15y agoI don't know about others, but anything that requires me to log in with Facebook ends up stopping me from using it because I don't want all my contacts to see that I signed up for it.
- bretthardin 15y agofragsworth. We will implement other logins soon. This was just an MVP and we wanted to have something "in the real world" to avoid people posting racist items.
- gm 15y agoI think you forgot the "V" in MVP... If we are free to be assholes in the social network and say what we really think ('cuz we are all assholes deep inside :-) ), the very last thing I want to do is tie it to my real-life account on FB. Easy for you guys to implement, yes. "Viable"? I think not.
- riffraff 15y agonot sure if they implemented this in this mv?p but there is a trivial and at the same time incredibly unused solution: just add a checkbox "post anonimously" next to every interaction form.
- jvrossb 15y agoViable? Who knows. Hilarious? Yes! Now let us click through to peoples' profiles to view all their posts and it'll be awesome!
- bermanoid 15y agoA social network that bases itself on the idea that by default you're "friends" with everybody should not have any barrier to entry, by the basic philosophy of the thing. If I can't see why I might want to join without joining, I'm not going to join, plain and simple.
- stfu 15y ago
- irollboozers 15y agoI actually think this solves some serious problems. I think most non-trolls don't realize how powerful the 'dislike' button is. With a like or upvote button, you don't do anything by way of separating trolls from real content. That's what the 'no' is for, and websites shouldn't be afraid of that. Seriously, from here on out it should rapid cross-platform expansion. I'm looking at you, Youtube.
- werdnanoslen 15y agoI feel like this is exactly what's going on with the HN G+ circle. About 80% are reposters, who I immediately remove from circles, about 15% post interesting stuff, and about 5% are just people sort of worth following like Linus Torvalds and Richard Branson.
- dlevine 15y agoI was thinking that this was going to be a filter on HN that blocked the comments by people you didn't like. That would be kind of a cool project. Basically, you could click "hide" and no longer see comments by a particular person. Over time, it could use clustering and machine learning to decide which comments you should see.
- _delirium 15y agosomeday I hope the progress of technology will bring us back up to the level of 1980s killfiles ;-)
- InclinedPlane 15y agoMuch like the aphorism about all sufficiently complex programs effectively striving to re-implement Lisp, I think all sufficiently complex social sites are effectively striving to re-create usenet in its heyday.
- cwilson 15y agoThis is a case where using Bootstrap didn't help them with having a clean design out of the gate. I like the idea, but there is pretty much no way I'm going to authenticate with Facebook, simply because it looks so unprofessional and ugly. A few simple changes, like not using the purple on grey, not using the color pink at all (there are lots of sites that will help you generate a good color pallet), and being more consistent with your padding between rows, would go a long way.
- Finbarr 15y agoI'm afraid designers were few and far between at the SWSJ event and we didn't have one on the team.
- codingstaff 15y agoGuys, don't listent to wrong feedback coming out of... whatever. Trollblock is an awesome resource for trolling and you should stick to that idea. Comments should be hella funny and yeah, keep the facebook login. Otherwise u'll have a bunch of weirdo nazis screaming out loud. Cool stuff!
- pud 15y agoJust FYI - site appears to be down at the moment. Overloaded? Confirmed by http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/trollblock.com http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/trollblock.com
- Finbarr 15y agoThere have been intermittent issues. I was driving home from SWSJ and unable to deal with it for around an hour earlier this evening. Trying to fix a few bugs in the code now.
- ponyous 15y agoHN effect? Site is down.
- jvrossb 15y agoI think it's hilarious and I'm proud to link it to FB :)
- DesignerJoel 15y agoInteresting idea, I'll definitely try it once I can login some other way.
- malkia 15y agoOther attempts from the past: http://fiendster.com http://fiendster.com