Rendered at 08:29:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
lambdaone 1 days ago [-]
I just took a look at the page's own 'town square'. At the moment, it's largely full of people saying offensive things for the sake of it.
Mtinie 1 days ago [-]
After having been a moderator for a number of communities over the years—BBCs in the 90s, niche forums during the 00s & 10s, Reddit boards in the 20s—I’ve come to believe that running shadow services where disruptive individuals can comingle may be the best way to handle this.
The advent of LLMs really opens the door to shunting off these “community members “ who’d rather contribute in misanthropic ways for the lulz than either leave or not contribute at all. They can take part in an interactive echo chamber that gives just as well as they can. You don’t even need a powerful model so the overall costs to the community are probably lower than the alternatives of trying to coexist with community-arsonists.
I spent years trying to find ways to bring people productively “into the fold” but eventually realized that it is futile in some cases because there’s zero value to the individual or the community to find a middle ground. They want to see things burn, and the community simply wants them out.
purple-leafy 1 days ago [-]
Yes this is the way, give no affordance that they are banned
fragmede 1 days ago [-]
But why not kick them out? Why bother with a shadow site for them?
metamet 1 days ago [-]
If they don't know they're being quarantined, there's no reason for them to find a way around their block. They'll eventually tucker themselves out and move on to whatever their internet equivalent of burning ants with a magnifying glass is.
hopfog 1 days ago [-]
I used to run a small MMORPG. I only had to ban a player once but when I did they made it their life's mission to get around it and spam profanities. They went through every proxy in existence and I had to resort to banning whole IP ranges to keep them out.
nkrisc 12 hours ago [-]
If they believe they’re still trolling people they will keep doing so and won’t make an alternative account and will keep harassing bots instead of real people.
sneak 1 days ago [-]
The same reason people get shadowbanned. If they know they are banned they will attempt to work around it.
SubiculumCode 1 days ago [-]
One day I'll find out that I've been shadow banned from HN, and all of you were bots all along, lolz
childintime 1 days ago [-]
That defines planet earth nicely. Everybody here is shadow banned and has issues to sort out.
paytonjjones 20 hours ago [-]
This suggestion is scarier than the thought someone might say a slur.
You're talking about using a machine to detect social undesirables then quarantining them in the matrix.
Mtinie 19 hours ago [-]
A slur is rarely the problem. Trolls can (sometimes) add flavor to a community and keep things interesting. Mostly they can be an annoyance.
I’m specifically referring to people who have seemingly made it their sole purpose to create as much indiscriminate damage as possible.
You can ban them, block routes for them to attempt to Sybil themselves back to having accounts, etc. but even with great moderation tools and systems, it’s extremely difficult to set up a strong enough set of controls which don’t adversely impact everyone else who you want to have participate in the community.
Yes, a shadow environment is dystopian. It’s not my nature to want to even consider using one.
But we’re talking about privately run communities which also deserve to exist to serve their purposes.
So given the choice between anarchy which drives away people who contribute to make the community what it is and a shadow option for those actively working against its interests, I’ll consider the community first.
You may have misinterpreted my comment. I’m not suggesting you use LLMs as moderators. I’m talking about using LLMs as participant “members” of this shadow board to interact with someone whose account was flagged by a human moderator.
chipsrafferty 10 hours ago [-]
If someone is able to get around a ton of banning techniques, they will definitely notice they're shadowbanned.
Mtinie 10 hours ago [-]
In some cases, I’m sure you are right. That said, the online communities which currently employ shadowban systems continue to use them. That tells me there’s a value greater than their implementation and operation costs.
There is no perfect tech solution to a human problem. But in my opinion, having access to a partial mitigation is better than no mitigation.
nkrisc 12 hours ago [-]
There’s a difference between someone who is occasionally abrasive and mentally ill people want to destroy things other people enjoy.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing the other guidelines too, we'd appreciate it. Note this one, for example:
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
swyx 10 hours ago [-]
this comment immediately replying to "You're talking about using a machine to detect social undesirables then quarantining them in the matrix." raises interesting questions about the nature and purpose of dangbot
paytonjjones 12 hours ago [-]
I would be happy to edit but I don't think I yet have the ability. Cheers.
dang 11 hours ago [-]
Normally I'd say not to bother, but since your GP post got some interesting replies, I think it's a good idea so I've re-opened it for editing.
If you do that, let me know and I'll unflag the post and collapse the moderation bits ;)
paytonjjones 10 hours ago [-]
Appreciated! It's edited.
dang 8 hours ago [-]
Ok, all done. Thanks.
trollbridge 1 days ago [-]
Within about 300ms I thought “moderation is going to be a problem”.
childintime 1 days ago [-]
Why? Messages disappear after a few seconds. So all messages are self moderating!
jumbo1111 10 hours ago [-]
AI can moderate given specific instructions to prevent anything that can damaged the brand's image.
wwind123 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, I had exactly the same thought.
lifeformed 1 days ago [-]
Maybe a really lightweight fast LLM could moderate messages in realtime. Not sure how pricey that would get though.
Jolter 23 hours ago [-]
No matter how cheap per request, someone will figure out a way to DoS that endpoint, and it will be extremely pricy unless you have effective rate limiting.
Kiro 22 hours ago [-]
The OpenAI moderation endpoint is free and it doesn't count toward the usage limit.
michaelmrose 1 days ago [-]
Extremely if not behind substantially cheaper anti spam measures.
Further it may still make sense to use human reports to gate some automation even if it slows response.
dools 1 days ago [-]
So it’s a twitter plugin?
swiftcoder 1 days ago [-]
Love it, also love that there's one HN visitor just hanging out typing "dick and balls" over and over again. That's unmoderated anonymous public squares for you
childintime 1 days ago [-]
That was dang if I'm not mistaken.
joegyoung 4 hours ago [-]
That person is still spamming the service even after 21 hours
justeoghan 20 hours ago [-]
Oh how fun.
Sadly I went there and someone has botted it with “dick and balls” constantly being spammed by multiple people.
But that’s to be expected when something gets attention. On other sites I can see this being nice addition. And a great concept.
furyofantares 20 hours ago [-]
I'm interested in trying a moderation scheme that puts the power in the receiving client, with opinionated defaults. Let the client filter for itself, mute users for itself, and make users invisible to itself. Have default settings that make sense for the app, but let the user override them.
Use a cheap purpose-built LLM like OpenAI's free moderation endpoint to classify the text and send the original text plus the classification to clients, and let clients choose what to do with it, with opinionated defaults appropriate to the app.
Maybe you still need to identify persistent bad actors rather than acting only on content. But still, allow clients to decide what to do with that information.
I suppose my thinking is that strong default automatic moderation that's invisible to offenders is a requirement for a project like this to be able to offer a welcoming experience to users, but putting the power in an LLM and fixed filter lists feels very wrong. So my thought is to use those things to give the client power. But maybe that makes no difference if nobody changes settings away from defaults anyway.
toofy 19 hours ago [-]
on the other hand, if someone is making their own site, they may care about the user impression their site gives to visitors.
i would think they should have the freedom on the site they build and host to choose the impression they give. and sure, if they choose to let their square be filled with noise rather than signal, that’s absolutely their choice. but they also may choose for it to be filled with signal rather than noise. the key thing is the site owner should have the choice to give whatever impression they want for their creation.
again, if they want that impression to be hijacked by noisy trolls, they can choose that too.
furyofantares 19 hours ago [-]
Is this related to my comment in a way I'm not understanding?
toofy 19 hours ago [-]
well yes, you indicate all of the moderation should be handled on the visitors end. i’m saying if the site owner is specifically intending the visitor to have a certain experience designed by the site owner themselves, then clients choosing their own moderation is the opposite of this.
if we limited it to client side only, the creator of the site has lost their choice of how they prefer their site to come across.
and for sure, some people may absolutely prefer to send an experience full of noise that overshadows the rest of their site.
furyofantares 17 hours ago [-]
I see. It seemed unrelated to me because I talked about strong opinionated defaults, which is, to me, entirely about the creator choosing how their site comes across. I don't think being able to turn showdead on here on HN significantly changes how the site comes across, but it being on by default would.
thatguysaguy 1 days ago [-]
The contrast between the example screenshots and the standard internet behavior in the live demo is hilarious
NitpickLawyer 1 days ago [-]
To paraphrase, there's no scheme for moderation / censoring / filtering that survives contact with the Internet. It simply can't be done. People take it as a challenge, and you can't design a system that handles it while remaining useful.
If you ban words, people will introduce typos / different spelling. If you ban concepts people will change the concepts (see the "unalive" thing that's popular now). If people want to be miserable, they will be miserable. And they'll invent new words, or use euphemisms to get their point across.
23 hours ago [-]
freakynit 1 days ago [-]
I made something similar last year: A p2p chat popup (that sits on bottom right of the page as a bubble) that allows all visitors to chat with each other. It had simple keyword based moderation in-built (can be easily bypassed though).
Was planning to add github oauth to get a known identity and persistent messaging so visitors can chat with each other across sites.
Instead of a webmaster adding script to their site, it was a browser extension.
The intent was two folds:
1. Get to know other people having similar interests,
2. Try something on the lines of a decentralized chat/messaging system.
goobatrooba 1 days ago [-]
It sounds like a nice idea, but probably only one of those things that work only once at scale - with hundreds of millions of pages, you will only meet others on the most common ones unless the extension is already very popular?
freakynit 1 days ago [-]
That's true.
Site-local chat was meant to be the default way. But, was not restricted to that. People could keep whitelisted list of sites that they are open to get pings/DM's from.
I was still not able to figure out the privacy-focused, and local, interest matching part since it was meant to be p2p (without any server storage), and local storage can easily be tweaked.
If this was solved, my plan then was to automatically suggest people who may have similar interests depending on the sites they browse, for how long, and the messages they generally send.
Kinda like tinder, but, you don't have to sign-up and install no app.
cr125rider 18 hours ago [-]
The network effect is HARD
purple-leafy 1 days ago [-]
Moderation moderation moderation . It’s a big problem
I have similar moderation concerns in my browser game/engine but I only ban offensive slurs not swears, but I give no visual affordance that the word is not allowed
The only surface where players see the input content is in a share card, and if they finish a game and get to the share card they will find the offensive word has been REDACTED lol
So it’s a long feedback loop just to find out your hijinks lead nowhere
tasuki 20 hours ago [-]
What is the difference between slurs and swears?
flexagoon 20 hours ago [-]
Slurs are targeted towards specific groups of people (or I guess just anyone? "Clanker" is considered a slur, and you can probably come up with plenty of slurs for animals, they just won't be considered offensive and socially unacceptable like the ones for humans)
18 hours ago [-]
sneak 1 days ago [-]
…or you could just let people talk? People who engage with social features generally do so because they want to talk to other people. That carries some inherent risks.
purple-leafy 1 days ago [-]
No? Especially not in my case where it’s a share artefact that is intended to be shared with others on various platforms.
Having my game aesthetic + slur on a sharing artefact is a great way for people to think my game encourages that crap and to “cancel” the game.
Not that I agree with, or care about, cancel culture - but I don’t want people in general associating my game with slurs.
I’m all for swearing and saying funny things that are not pc, but I draw the line at harmful offensive content.
Do what you wish but do no harm unto others.
0x3f 22 hours ago [-]
I get the desire to moderate your game, but how are words 'harmful' exactly? Especially random, throwaway internet spew. Harmful to your game's reputation, maybe. But to the people?
toofy 19 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
0x3f 15 hours ago [-]
> call your wife a fat sow everyday in earnest for a year and see if she isn’t granted a divorce for maltreatment.
Is this an appeal to the law or something? It's not a very good argument. Many things which are harmful are not illegal. Many things which are illegal are not harmful.
Also, that's not even how divorce works!
> no one is claiming words are physically harmful
"speech is violence" is a position that some people hold.
> if words had no power, we wouldn’t fight so hard to protect them from government abuse.
People fight hard for all kinds of nonsense. Historically, people have fought hard for things that didn't matter at all.
12 hours ago [-]
cindyllm 12 hours ago [-]
[dead]
petee 20 hours ago [-]
Clearly you haven't been exposed to much of the underbelly of the internet. Words can translate to physical harm and actions in the real world, and do regularly
0x3f 15 hours ago [-]
I grew up on the internet, I doubt there's any level of textual depravity I haven't seen.
Larrikin 19 hours ago [-]
This sounds like a disingenuous argument to actually try to argue for more racism. Every kid in the world has been called stupid by a classmate and knows that words aren't meaningless.
I think you've failed to understand the words in question, rather than them being meaningless
chipsrafferty 10 hours ago [-]
I think you're a troll who should be banned from this site for wasting everyone's time.
0x3f 2 hours ago [-]
Hm, can't really have engaging discussions with people who just don't understand what's being said. Can't force the information into their brains so we can do that either. Not sure which action you'd like me to take to improve this situation, then.
febusravenga 1 days ago [-]
when I entered site, all bubbles contained dicks/balls and combination of these... so... someone found words that are not banned, but still abused forum in most primitive way ..
you're wrong, moderation is needed in ventures like this
starkparker 1 days ago [-]
The demo widget right now is botted with people spamming nonsense to the point of breaking browsers, much less the intended use. "let people talk" is not the same as "give disruptive people the tools to prevent others from talking"
herval 18 hours ago [-]
Yea I think this was somewhat true back in 2001. With bots composing half the traffic of the internet, governments controlling massive social botnets and the polarization of politics everywhere, the internet became a full scale spam/hate fest
subscribed 13 hours ago [-]
I don't think horrible people (eg racist, xenophobic, bigots) have the right to share space with good, kind people.
They have the privilege they forfeit the moment they try to hurt others. If they don't behave like cunts I don't care, but if they do, I'll use any tool I have at my disposal to bar them from the space they don't respect. They can talk to their kind in the nasty spaces anyway, so it's not like they're in the solitary confinement.
ncallaway 1 days ago [-]
Nah, drive those horrible people out of social spaces. I want to talk to other people without racist assholes bumbling around.
Being a racist asshole carries some inherent risks too, like people choosing not to let you enter their spaces.
toofy 19 hours ago [-]
more than anything it’s just signal to noise ratios.
i’m so sick of people just adding dipshit noise to every single place they can and making it impossible to have normal ass conversation.
at the end of the day, these people need to realize the simple shit we realize in like 1st grade: if you’re an asshole to everyone around you, no one will want to be around you.
it really is that simple. but for some reason some of these people struggle to understand basic ass things little kids learn easily.
TheCapeGreek 16 hours ago [-]
In a small local scene with several whatsapp groups, I put "don't be an edgelord" as a catch-all rule rule when I started a discord in the community.
Lo and behold, the EXACT person I had in mind when making the rule, moaned about it.
Works as intended.
voidfunc 18 hours ago [-]
Unlike a playground assholes on the internet realize a couple things:
1. Theres a near endless supply of assholes
2. If youre loud enough and an asshole enough you'll find other assholes.
3. Your new found group of assholes can then go off and terrorize other people while attracting more assholes.
javascripthater 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
ncallaway 1 days ago [-]
I didn’t say they weren’t.
I said they can fuck off from any spaces I have a voice in.
Social pariahs are people. Doesn’t mean I’m going to tolerate them around me.
You choose to be a social pariah, you live with the social consequences of that.
They should have food, water, shelter, and healthcare. They don’t get my attention, respect, or acceptance.
noduerme 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
dansmith1919 1 days ago [-]
Technically yes but that doesn’t mean they deserve a podium to spew their hate
edit: on second thought this is way too obvious ragebait
mplewis 1 days ago [-]
racist people don't get to talk in my spaces
aorloff 1 days ago [-]
If the history of the internet is to be any guide, it won't be the slog of racism that will shut something like this down, it will be a firehose of penis pictures.
Somewhere, someone will figure out how to create a bot that floods this with penis pictures, and that will be the end of it (or the beginning of the end, where a short period of anti-penis-pic defensive patches will be made until the software maintainers just give up)
purple-leafy 1 days ago [-]
Hot-dog-not-hot-dog
michaelmrose 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
noduerme 24 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
SiempreViernes 24 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
23 hours ago [-]
noduerme 23 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
SiempreViernes 20 hours ago [-]
No, it is a precise reference to an accurate description of a type of disruptive behavior.
afpx 1 days ago [-]
There was a thing from the 90s kind of like this called Third Voice. It was a cool idea, but I remember there being a lot of backlash from brands.
I contemplated implementing it on my site for a while but decided I didn’t want to add the JavaScript. Still find it a really cute concept.
dawie 1 days ago [-]
I love the idea, but it’s a real shame how people are using it. I wonder if AI can moderate it for offensiveness and spam prevention
cauenapier 22 hours ago [-]
Well, this is the behaviour of the crowd.
Before HN, or even if you go to other websites that are using TownSquare, it can be quite fun.
A hade a lot of very funny and meaningful interaction with people visiting the sites
TheAtomic 19 hours ago [-]
This is really cool. Is there anyway to keep some people off my small part of the webverse?
Having read some of the comments, I'd happily use if there was a way to blast (prefarably with a Doom shotgun) some of the miscreants from appearing, but only on my site, and maybe some filters (slurs, etc) that auto-ban them that I can set. Other people could moderate as they will but I'm kind of tired of the toxic people ruining everything.
simondanerd 1 days ago [-]
Love the idea. Could use some filters and stale (sleeping) clients could get removed quicker.
Also, it seemed to be disconnecting quite often, maybe a hug of death thing.
I deeply appreciate the honesty here. I’ll pass based on the vibecodedness of it but perhaps it won’t be a dealbreaker for others.
purple-leafy 1 days ago [-]
Yeah. I also don’t like the fact the dev posts the link and doesn’t interact with anyone here at all, so the link posting is effectively spray and pray abandonware too. Easy come easy go like they say
Is it the philosophical reason you refuse to engage or is it because you don’t trust the security of this project?
brody_hamer 1 days ago [-]
Easy come, easy go. I find most vibe coded projects are abandonware.
Also, in this context, security.
monkeymeister 1 days ago [-]
Neat idea! It's simple but very effective - and I really enjoy the detail of the benches and the tree. Very nice.
I wouldn't add it to any of my sites due to the unmoderated nature of it - seeing some fairly unsavory things in your demo - but that's just a little tweak, I'm sure!
cauenapier 22 hours ago [-]
Actually, there is moderation.
The problem is that the page came to HN before I added the moderation keywords or implemented more things :P
But overall, it's possible.
On the details like benches and trees, you can also customize it. YOu can add as many props as you want, wherever you want, and style them accordingly. :)
tamimio 12 hours ago [-]
Love the idea, I added to my site!
I know it might be too much to ask for, but it would be great to have the ability to add your own props, like an icon and how to animate it. I would love to add maybe cats or drones icons that also move around!
wahnfrieden 1 days ago [-]
openai has a free moderation endpoint. no reason to not use it.
edit: downvoters either know something I don't about its unsuitability, or have outdated info on it and think it's against terms to use it for reasons unrelated to GPT. it's not against terms.
sourcegrift 1 days ago [-]
If your website attracts such elements perhaps there's a reason?
DougN7 1 days ago [-]
The demo is attracting the HN crowd and it’s getting… well, let’s just say this crowd is about as good as it gets online.
chipsrafferty 10 hours ago [-]
The HN crowd is about as worst as it gets. The people here are really bad.
Planktonne 23 hours ago [-]
I think the HN crowd might be the worst commentariat on a site that isn't explicitly focused on antisocial behaviour.
sourcegrift 1 days ago [-]
You clearly haven't visited any Buddhist forums, or generally non-islamic religious forums
People are flooding the channel with messages, causing the widget to use too many resources on ios; and the website is being endlessly reloaded.
Any idea how to fix this? Bonus points for user friendly non technical solutions, ie is there a way to design an online social space where people want to collaborate and their first thought isn’t trolling?
purple-leafy 1 days ago [-]
I’m not on pc so can’t inspect it, but make it a sandboxes iframe so it can’t interact with the parent site.
Is there a way to throttle iframe cpu usage ?
You could probably queue messages, cull old messages, cap concurrent connections. That may be the issue is too many peers
oraziorillo 1 days ago [-]
I love the idea! The next step is to add role play games in town squares.
Procrastes 1 days ago [-]
I was thinking the same thing, or even just little minigames and Easter eggs for people to find.
hallman76 1 days ago [-]
I've always wondered if we could find a way to add content website's content without it turning into a shitshow. MLS listings / Zillow is an interesting use-case. A realtor might describe something as "sun-filled" but omit that the home is next to a 24/7 dump truck repair warehouse.
AstroJetson 17 hours ago [-]
I messed around some, talked to two people. Watched the birds fly.
I did the "go to next town" It worked, but then I got to (https://emilesilvis.com/) and got stuck. The Town Square is in 1/2 the page, so you can't get to the two ends to be able to go to the next town.
aetherspawn 1 days ago [-]
Make a MapleStory-like one where each website can design their own room, and you can kill mobs and bosses and stuff. It would be neat if the characters and items persisted between.
Edit: a super smash brothers-like would be fun too. Maybe the page itself could be the platforms.
anirbanhere 1 days ago [-]
This is so cool, gonna add this to my game website.
This can easily help to get me multiplayer matching in the game.
cauenapier 22 hours ago [-]
Cool! Let me know when you add it! I'll like to make a blog post about it :)
pistoriusp 1 days ago [-]
Built something like this for the v1.0 launch of RedwoodSDK in March; but it's a popularity graph (like the time scrubber on YouTube). I figured that it could be useful to myself, and others, to aggregate the information that people find most useful.
rather interesting, except the spamming of the inappropriate messages.
patcon 1 days ago [-]
I've been playing with presence too...! I def am thinking about using it more for real-time motion communication (which is largely missing from web) rather than text (which is very overrepresented, and where most moderation comes in).
I was toying with the idea of making a little crowd representation sticky at the bottom, like watching a screen together :)
Regardless, I love concepts like this. Thanks!
bensyverson 18 hours ago [-]
In case you wanted a comment section but less civilized
zdc1 1 days ago [-]
This was actually a lot of fun. Not as much trolling as I anticipated. Surprising amount of normal chit chat.
cauenapier 22 hours ago [-]
When you go to a nice website and encounter people with similar interests reading the same thing, the experience is awesome!
ameon 1 days ago [-]
this is a very clever concept. I'll keep it in mind for the future - when my app site has persistent amount of visitors. Are there some rules/settings for stop words to prevent some types of abuse? Or is it planned?
cauenapier 22 hours ago [-]
Thanks!! :D
Yes there is already rules/settings to stop words and ban people.
I'm also improving overall moderation and banning mechanisms.
Procrastes 1 days ago [-]
This is great! Thank you for sharing it. Fun to use and already customizable.
vitorbaptistaa 1 days ago [-]
This is amazing! Congratulations on the launch. Repository link somewhere?
This is too cool for the current state of humanity.
zhxiaoliang 1 days ago [-]
I enjoyed the design.
cauenapier 22 hours ago [-]
Thaaanks :D
ArcaneMoose 1 days ago [-]
Really cool but should limit # of people shown when there are too many. Currently it gets really laggy
winddude 1 days ago [-]
interesting. i'm appearing as a grey guy not the orange guy like your blog says
cauenapier 22 hours ago [-]
You can change your color by clicking in the pencil icon.
aweiher 21 hours ago [-]
I love the atmosphere with the benches and the tree
amatecha 1 days ago [-]
Oh what the heck? That's super cool! Awesome idea. Possible future enhancement: some basic day/night (or even weather?) design elements that match the timezone of the person whose site it is? Still, doesn't even need it, it's really cool as-is!
I could see it being used as some avenue for saying toxic stuff, so I'm suddenly feeling like the only allowed actions should be ones that can never be harmful (like text interactions are just choosing from a pre-set list)..
cauenapier 22 hours ago [-]
Thaaanks!
I've thought about weather , but I loved the idea for day/night!
I'll definately implement that soon!
It already has block/ban and block word list, but unfortunatelly I haven't added them in the settings for the landing page before HN made it front page.. Opsy
vitorbaptistaa 1 days ago [-]
Nintendo does this on Mario Kart, just allowing text from a pre-set list. It's very limited, but works.
Jeff9James 21 hours ago [-]
yay i just added it to my site signupdoggy.pages.dev thanks so much
mirkofr 1 days ago [-]
Maybe adding rooms will be a good move
msafi04 1 days ago [-]
I like the idea! congrats!
cauenapier 22 hours ago [-]
Thaaanks :)
blooalien 1 days ago [-]
Neat idea, but there seems to be zero defense against spammer scum. One jerk with a bot script seems able to make it totally useless for everyone else there.
cauenapier 22 hours ago [-]
Actually, there was.
But I haven't added all of them to the landing page. I wasn't expecing making HN front page :sweat (opooops)
But there is already some basic moderation and ban/kick functionalities.
However, there is still lots of room for improvement.
jedberg 1 days ago [-]
In the "this is why we can't have nice things" category, the first thing I saw was someone calling themselves "dick and balls". :(
cauenapier 22 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but don't lat the HN crowd spoil the thing.
You can check the other sites that are using Hackernews and you might have a great experience!
I've been chatting with a lot of people with similar interest and had a lot of very nice interactions!
14 hours ago [-]
lellow 1 days ago [-]
haha nice project! I stayed there for a couple of minutes and had such a good time!
melvinczyk 1 days ago [-]
I like the idea of this like a town square for websites. Nice job
VaradD09 1 days ago [-]
Looks good!
ljcoco 1 days ago [-]
cool idea!
StahlGuo 23 hours ago [-]
what a cute project
mkl 1 days ago [-]
Not really a square if it's 1D - everyone ends up on top of each other.
Wolfbeta 1 days ago [-]
Not really a highway if it's a series of tubes.
iJohnDoe 1 days ago [-]
This is actually really cool. We’ve needed this concept everywhere in technology. Something like this would have prevented the isolation and loneliness technology and the internet has created.
I don’t know all the answers, but joining people together, and reminders there are real people still there as we’ve moved from the physical world to the virtual world is an important part of the progression. In 50-100 years we will either have this epiphany or we will fail miserably.
cyanydeez 1 days ago [-]
would make more sense with webrtc.
sourcegrift 1 days ago [-]
First saw this on lobste.rs . Great idea, perhaps allow for a little customisation? I'd like minimal animation, just a counter of present people and a green dot that vibrates when someone is typing. Clicking either opens a chat box with last 20 minutes.
The advent of LLMs really opens the door to shunting off these “community members “ who’d rather contribute in misanthropic ways for the lulz than either leave or not contribute at all. They can take part in an interactive echo chamber that gives just as well as they can. You don’t even need a powerful model so the overall costs to the community are probably lower than the alternatives of trying to coexist with community-arsonists.
I spent years trying to find ways to bring people productively “into the fold” but eventually realized that it is futile in some cases because there’s zero value to the individual or the community to find a middle ground. They want to see things burn, and the community simply wants them out.
You're talking about using a machine to detect social undesirables then quarantining them in the matrix.
I’m specifically referring to people who have seemingly made it their sole purpose to create as much indiscriminate damage as possible.
You can ban them, block routes for them to attempt to Sybil themselves back to having accounts, etc. but even with great moderation tools and systems, it’s extremely difficult to set up a strong enough set of controls which don’t adversely impact everyone else who you want to have participate in the community.
Yes, a shadow environment is dystopian. It’s not my nature to want to even consider using one.
But we’re talking about privately run communities which also deserve to exist to serve their purposes.
So given the choice between anarchy which drives away people who contribute to make the community what it is and a shadow option for those actively working against its interests, I’ll consider the community first.
You may have misinterpreted my comment. I’m not suggesting you use LLMs as moderators. I’m talking about using LLMs as participant “members” of this shadow board to interact with someone whose account was flagged by a human moderator.
There is no perfect tech solution to a human problem. But in my opinion, having access to a partial mitigation is better than no mitigation.
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Can you please edit out swipes like "Do you hear yourself?". This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing the other guidelines too, we'd appreciate it. Note this one, for example:
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
If you do that, let me know and I'll unflag the post and collapse the moderation bits ;)
Further it may still make sense to use human reports to gate some automation even if it slows response.
Use a cheap purpose-built LLM like OpenAI's free moderation endpoint to classify the text and send the original text plus the classification to clients, and let clients choose what to do with it, with opinionated defaults appropriate to the app.
Maybe you still need to identify persistent bad actors rather than acting only on content. But still, allow clients to decide what to do with that information.
I suppose my thinking is that strong default automatic moderation that's invisible to offenders is a requirement for a project like this to be able to offer a welcoming experience to users, but putting the power in an LLM and fixed filter lists feels very wrong. So my thought is to use those things to give the client power. But maybe that makes no difference if nobody changes settings away from defaults anyway.
i would think they should have the freedom on the site they build and host to choose the impression they give. and sure, if they choose to let their square be filled with noise rather than signal, that’s absolutely their choice. but they also may choose for it to be filled with signal rather than noise. the key thing is the site owner should have the choice to give whatever impression they want for their creation.
again, if they want that impression to be hijacked by noisy trolls, they can choose that too.
if we limited it to client side only, the creator of the site has lost their choice of how they prefer their site to come across.
and for sure, some people may absolutely prefer to send an experience full of noise that overshadows the rest of their site.
If you ban words, people will introduce typos / different spelling. If you ban concepts people will change the concepts (see the "unalive" thing that's popular now). If people want to be miserable, they will be miserable. And they'll invent new words, or use euphemisms to get their point across.
Was planning to add github oauth to get a known identity and persistent messaging so visitors can chat with each other across sites.
Instead of a webmaster adding script to their site, it was a browser extension.
The intent was two folds:
1. Get to know other people having similar interests,
2. Try something on the lines of a decentralized chat/messaging system.
Site-local chat was meant to be the default way. But, was not restricted to that. People could keep whitelisted list of sites that they are open to get pings/DM's from.
I was still not able to figure out the privacy-focused, and local, interest matching part since it was meant to be p2p (without any server storage), and local storage can easily be tweaked.
If this was solved, my plan then was to automatically suggest people who may have similar interests depending on the sites they browse, for how long, and the messages they generally send.
Kinda like tinder, but, you don't have to sign-up and install no app.
I have similar moderation concerns in my browser game/engine but I only ban offensive slurs not swears, but I give no visual affordance that the word is not allowed
The only surface where players see the input content is in a share card, and if they finish a game and get to the share card they will find the offensive word has been REDACTED lol
So it’s a long feedback loop just to find out your hijinks lead nowhere
Having my game aesthetic + slur on a sharing artefact is a great way for people to think my game encourages that crap and to “cancel” the game.
Not that I agree with, or care about, cancel culture - but I don’t want people in general associating my game with slurs.
I’m all for swearing and saying funny things that are not pc, but I draw the line at harmful offensive content.
Do what you wish but do no harm unto others.
Is this an appeal to the law or something? It's not a very good argument. Many things which are harmful are not illegal. Many things which are illegal are not harmful.
Also, that's not even how divorce works!
> no one is claiming words are physically harmful
"speech is violence" is a position that some people hold.
> if words had no power, we wouldn’t fight so hard to protect them from government abuse.
People fight hard for all kinds of nonsense. Historically, people have fought hard for things that didn't matter at all.
>> if words had no power, we wouldn’t fight so hard to protect them from government abuse.
>People fight hard for all kinds of nonsense.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/nonsense
you're wrong, moderation is needed in ventures like this
They have the privilege they forfeit the moment they try to hurt others. If they don't behave like cunts I don't care, but if they do, I'll use any tool I have at my disposal to bar them from the space they don't respect. They can talk to their kind in the nasty spaces anyway, so it's not like they're in the solitary confinement.
Being a racist asshole carries some inherent risks too, like people choosing not to let you enter their spaces.
i’m so sick of people just adding dipshit noise to every single place they can and making it impossible to have normal ass conversation.
at the end of the day, these people need to realize the simple shit we realize in like 1st grade: if you’re an asshole to everyone around you, no one will want to be around you.
it really is that simple. but for some reason some of these people struggle to understand basic ass things little kids learn easily.
Lo and behold, the EXACT person I had in mind when making the rule, moaned about it.
Works as intended.
1. Theres a near endless supply of assholes
2. If youre loud enough and an asshole enough you'll find other assholes.
3. Your new found group of assholes can then go off and terrorize other people while attracting more assholes.
I said they can fuck off from any spaces I have a voice in.
Social pariahs are people. Doesn’t mean I’m going to tolerate them around me.
You choose to be a social pariah, you live with the social consequences of that.
They should have food, water, shelter, and healthcare. They don’t get my attention, respect, or acceptance.
edit: on second thought this is way too obvious ragebait
Somewhere, someone will figure out how to create a bot that floods this with penis pictures, and that will be the end of it (or the beginning of the end, where a short period of anti-penis-pic defensive patches will be made until the software maintainers just give up)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Voice
I contemplated implementing it on my site for a while but decided I didn’t want to add the JavaScript. Still find it a really cute concept.
A hade a lot of very funny and meaningful interaction with people visiting the sites
Having read some of the comments, I'd happily use if there was a way to blast (prefarably with a Doom shotgun) some of the miscreants from appearing, but only on my site, and maybe some filters (slurs, etc) that auto-ban them that I can set. Other people could moderate as they will but I'm kind of tired of the toxic people ruining everything.
Also, it seemed to be disconnecting quite often, maybe a hug of death thing.
I deeply appreciate the honesty here. I’ll pass based on the vibecodedness of it but perhaps it won’t be a dealbreaker for others.
Also, in this context, security.
I wouldn't add it to any of my sites due to the unmoderated nature of it - seeing some fairly unsavory things in your demo - but that's just a little tweak, I'm sure!
On the details like benches and trees, you can also customize it. YOu can add as many props as you want, wherever you want, and style them accordingly. :)
I know it might be too much to ask for, but it would be great to have the ability to add your own props, like an icon and how to animate it. I would love to add maybe cats or drones icons that also move around!
edit: downvoters either know something I don't about its unsuitability, or have outdated info on it and think it's against terms to use it for reasons unrelated to GPT. it's not against terms.
People are flooding the channel with messages, causing the widget to use too many resources on ios; and the website is being endlessly reloaded.
Any idea how to fix this? Bonus points for user friendly non technical solutions, ie is there a way to design an online social space where people want to collaborate and their first thought isn’t trolling?
Is there a way to throttle iframe cpu usage ?
You could probably queue messages, cull old messages, cap concurrent connections. That may be the issue is too many peers
I did the "go to next town" It worked, but then I got to (https://emilesilvis.com/) and got stuck. The Town Square is in 1/2 the page, so you can't get to the two ends to be able to go to the next town.
Edit: a super smash brothers-like would be fun too. Maybe the page itself could be the platforms.
https://rwsdk.com
I was toying with the idea of making a little crowd representation sticky at the bottom, like watching a screen together :)
Regardless, I love concepts like this. Thanks!
I could see it being used as some avenue for saying toxic stuff, so I'm suddenly feeling like the only allowed actions should be ones that can never be harmful (like text interactions are just choosing from a pre-set list)..
It already has block/ban and block word list, but unfortunatelly I haven't added them in the settings for the landing page before HN made it front page.. Opsy
However, there is still lots of room for improvement.
I don’t know all the answers, but joining people together, and reminders there are real people still there as we’ve moved from the physical world to the virtual world is an important part of the progression. In 50-100 years we will either have this epiphany or we will fail miserably.