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Show HN: Geofenced chat communities anyone can create

vicinity.social

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Re: Show HN: Geofenced chat communities anyone can create

#21

Post by pogue »

This was the model YikYak used and it was so much fun. They very much promoted it for use at colleges for students, but ended up geofence blocking it around high schools/middle schools because of cyberbulling concerns.

But, if enough people used it around certain areas, it could be a lot of fun & very helpful just to chit chat & talk about the weather & etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak

EDIT I can't accept the terms on my Samsung phone, as the text is over top of the buttons and I can't do anything but scroll the terms. Not sure if this is a browser (Brave) problem or a font size or what.

https://imgur.com/a/LjFFLn5

Re: Show HN: Geofenced chat communities anyone can create

#22

Post by deaux »

dangus wrote: post #16
deaux wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution here is human moderation and accepting that it's not going to turn into a unicorn, but a sustainable medium-sized business is incredibly possible. There are existing examples of this.

Which examples? I can’t think of any profitable companies with a profile like that. Free social media sites basically require scale. Human moderation is going to be a huge hurdle for this. Connecting Internet users by location seems like a massive safety liability. Making sure users are human and not just gathering locations of uses at an individual non-aggregated level also seems like a horrendous bad time. On top o…

[1]: Been around for 25 years, apparently employees 20 people and is still popular to this day. Donation-based.

[2] Seven paid staff members, $5 for an account, been around at least 22 years.

And there are bound to be a dozen outside the US that I don't know of. I've heard of this [3] being a Dutch one that had a good run for decades with multiple full-time employees, but can't confirm as I don't speak Dutch. Supposedly ad and donation sustained (?). Again, has outlived most social networks. Maybe a Dutch HNer who reads this can tell us more.

You can mean a thousand things by "profitable" but both achieve what I posited and what most commonly underlies "profitable": sustainable. And they are. They're easily in the top 1% of social networks by longevity. That the former is non-profit doesn't make a material difference, these are effectively medium-sized businesses as I posited.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_Porch_Forum

[2] https://www.metafilter.com

[3] https://www.fok.nl

Re: Show HN: Geofenced chat communities anyone can create

#23

Post by just-tom »

pogue wrote: post #21

This was the model YikYak used and it was so much fun. They very much promoted it for use at colleges for students, but ended up geofence blocking it around high schools/middle schools because of cyberbulling concerns. But, if enough people used it around certain areas, it could be a lot of fun & very helpful just to chit chat & talk about the weather & etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak EDIT I can't accept t…

This happened to me too - the solution is to temporarily set the page view as desktop view through the browser settings.

Re: Show HN: Geofenced chat communities anyone can create

#24

Post by lukan »

bragr wrote: post #15

The legal terms seem pretty evil for what this is. I'll allow that evil may not be the intent. Perhaps you just asked a lawyer for the most bulletproof terms possible, but what you've end up with is a very one sided set of terms. Honestly the more I read, the weirder they get. If I tell a lie to another user, them I'm liable to be banned? I see what you are going for in that section, but as written, any normal, day t…

It is evil to not allow lies?

That does not seem to be so evil .. but I did not found the legal terms on a first glance, so maybe there is more?

Re: Show HN: Geofenced chat communities anyone can create

#25

Post by madaxe_again »

cellis wrote: post #18

On chrome iOS I’m physically unable to press the three checkboxes on the terms which means I can’t try your app. They appear to be overlapped by the terms themselves and thus never received click events.

Yeah, this only appears to work on desktops with a res of 4K or greater, which is… not ideal for a social network?

Re: Show HN: Geofenced chat communities anyone can create

#26

Post by squigz »

bragr wrote: post #15

The legal terms seem pretty evil for what this is. I'll allow that evil may not be the intent. Perhaps you just asked a lawyer for the most bulletproof terms possible, but what you've end up with is a very one sided set of terms. Honestly the more I read, the weirder they get. If I tell a lie to another user, them I'm liable to be banned? I see what you are going for in that section, but as written, any normal, day t…

How did you even find a TOS? The link to both that and the privacy policy on the Sign Up modal don't work.

Re: Show HN: Geofenced chat communities anyone can create

#27

Post by squigz »

lukan wrote: post #24
bragr wrote: post #15

The legal terms seem pretty evil for what this is. I'll allow that evil may not be the intent. Perhaps you just asked a lawyer for the most bulletproof terms possible, but what you've end up with is a very one sided set of terms. Honestly the more I read, the weirder they get. If I tell a lie to another user, them I'm liable to be banned? I see what you are going for in that section, but as written, any normal, day t…

It is evil to not allow lies? That does not seem to be so evil .. but I did not found the legal terms on a first glance, so maybe there is more?

I think it's evil - by a small stretch of the word - to think that it's appropriate to forbid lying in general on a social chat platform, particularly as a bannable offence. It's also foolish to think that such terms could be reasonably enforced.

Re: Show HN: Geofenced chat communities anyone can create

#28

Post by stavros »

I was interested in trying this, but the UI is like pulling teeth. I couldn't accept the ToS because the checkbox was under the terms box, and had to tap very carefully.

Then I tried to create a Hub, but couldn't figure out how to get it to accept my drawing (there's no "done" button, only "cancel", even though the polygon I want is right there). After a few frustrating tries, I went back and noticed that I need to click the first point again, which is very unintuitive.

After that, it kept complaining that my area is too big, and there was no way to live-adjust the area while seeing how big it is. I had to cancel out of the whole thing, go out to the hub screen, then click "start drawing" again for another try. I didn't make it past that.

Re: Show HN: Geofenced chat communities anyone can create

#30

Post by [deleted] »

just-tom wrote: post #23
pogue wrote: post #21

This was the model YikYak used and it was so much fun. They very much promoted it for use at colleges for students, but ended up geofence blocking it around high schools/middle schools because of cyberbulling concerns. But, if enough people used it around certain areas, it could be a lot of fun & very helpful just to chit chat & talk about the weather & etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak EDIT I can't accept t…

This happened to me too - the solution is to temporarily set the page view as desktop view through the browser settings.

[deleted]
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