Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#101

Post by theveloped » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

peterkshultz wrote: post #66

That the app is both geofenced and anonymous reminds me of Yik Yak, which was a huge success on my college campus before the company decided to move away from anonymity. Did you develop this as a side project, or is this something you want to turn into a business?

It's indeed a side project that I've been working on for a while. It was mainly the development that interested me. Running/marketing a social messaging app is something others would probably enjoy more.

Currently I'm working on a different that, although also a software project, is more closely linked to applications/technologies that I love. It is this project I indeed aim to turn into a viable business.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#102

Post by theveloped » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:27 PM UTC

reledi wrote: post #96

theveloped wrote: post #2

Let me know what you guys think. The app was made to get people talking again to the people around them. I threw in automatically generated anonymous nicknames to lower the initial barrier a bit. Any advise on how to market/keep people engaged are most welcome.

I don't have an iPhone to try it out, so a few questions. 1. Do you need to "log in" to use it? Or can it be used without an account? 2. Can you have hidden/secret conversations? That is, the conversation isn't easily observable by everyone within 1km?

There is no sign-up required what so ever.

If one wishes to continue a conversation one-on-one I believe other applications are better suited for that. I therefore build only one private function:

The exchange of contact details if both parties agree. If one wishes to participate in an exchange of details. It is also for this function only required to fill in some form of details. The idea being you can than continue your conversation in private elsewhere.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#103

Post by blitzo » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

You know your product doing great if it blocked in China.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#104

Post by Johnny555 » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:36 PM UTC

How anonymous can a service be that sends messages through a central server and uses your phone's GPS to know where you are at all times? You're only anonymous to each other, but the server in the middle knows all.

When I saw the headline, I thought this used some sort of ad-hoc Wifi network with MAC spoofing and couldn't figure out how they got 1km of range.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#105

Post by wccrawford » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:43 PM UTC

elaus wrote: post #29

How does this work if a person that is 500m away from me is currently chatting with someone 1.2km away… will it seem to me like that person is talking to himself (because his chat partner is out of my reach)?

I played a game that had communication like this, and the conversations were often quite odd because of it, hearing half-conversations a fair bit of the time.

And relaying messages to people further away... Though it wasn't anonymous, and people knew where to tell people to send the messages towards.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#106

Post by pantalaimon » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 5:03 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #85

peterkshultz wrote: post #66

That the app is both geofenced and anonymous reminds me of Yik Yak, which was a huge success on my college campus before the company decided to move away from anonymity. Did you develop this as a side project, or is this something you want to turn into a business?

Actually, you on your campus might want to try out Jodel – it’s basically a German YikYak clone, but it still has all the anonymity in it.

It also has a channel feature that works somewhat like subreddits which spawns pretty nice little communities

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#107

Post by Too » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 5:11 PM UTC

A1kmm wrote: post #34

If it is exactly 1 km you could triangulate to find someone's location. A program to do that would do a bisection search along a line (faking coordinates for the location of the device) to find the point on the line where you transition to seeing the person's messages. Then, repeat along other two lines in different directions. Each transition point gives a circle of 1 km radius on which the person is present, and th…

There are many solutions to this, some already listed. For best effect apply all of them together: Rate limiting api requests and movement, hysteresis on distance, randomness on distance, snap to grid, increasing randomness the more you seem to be trilaterating, etc.

Some of thrm will also solve the problem of just discovering a user, starting a chat and then instantly loosing them, even though you were both siting still, as you were on the border.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#108

Post by icebraining » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

Geee wrote: post #21

icebraining wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually on similar apps the messages go to their servers (over 3/4G) along with your location info, and then they re-route it back to all the users whose reported location is close to yours. An exception was FireChat, which built a mesh network using the Bluetooh & Wifi-based connectivity API provided by iOS called "Multipeer Connectivity Framework", so you could talk to someone far away as long as there were other u…

Was?

At the time their were an exception, nowadays I'm not sure if there aren't others doing the same.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#109

Post by andrewstuart2 » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 5:19 PM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #104

How anonymous can a service be that sends messages through a central server and uses your phone's GPS to know where you are at all times? You're only anonymous to each other, but the server in the middle knows all. When I saw the headline, I thought this used some sort of ad-hoc Wifi network with MAC spoofing and couldn't figure out how they got 1km of range.

GPS + Tower location + SRC/DEST IP + MEID, etc.

The metadata is the problem for true anonymity, not the amount of information that individual users can see, or that the server stores in its database.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#110

Post by Torgo » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 5:29 PM UTC

fatdog wrote: post #94

mgallowa wrote: post #61

I founded an anonymous social media platform in the past. It can be a real pain because once identity/accountability is removed, people tend to act very poorly. On paper, I like your idea of helping people to form risk-free connections, but it is very possible for your platform to spin out of your control. The small radius location nature of your app will likely mean a lot of negative press and/or police inquiries ab…

Authorities of all sorts love the bully narrative because it legitimizes their demands for compliance. Social media is undermining to them because people don't want to be supervised. The real reason social media sites die without moderation is not because it alienates people who take bullying, it is that when there is no way to become a moderator, people seek status and power elsewhere. Reddit survives because it is…

I don't really see Facebook waning, but it did effectively disprove that removing anonymity reduces bullying. I maintain a minimal presence there and most of the time report mobbing and harassment and I've never had anything removed. If you want your post removed, say something minimally racist. If you want impunity, post the address of somebody that shot an animal, inviting people to "get them."