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Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

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Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#31

Post by kovacs »

todd3834 wrote: post #3
JoeCortopassi wrote: post #2

Hey everyone, todd3834 and I have been wanting this for awhile and decided to just start building it ourselves :-) The hope is it makes HN an even greater place to find people with similar ambitions so that we can build great things. This isn't meant to be the next coming of Facebook, it's just a super useful tool we like and want others to use with us. Main features we think you'll like: - frictionless signup. You d…

Details on the tech stack: We are using React and friends for the front end and Programmable Chat by Twilio on the BE ( https://www.twilio.com/chat ) Happy to go further into details on any of that if interested. We are considering open sourcing the entire project, is that something people would be interested in?

Will there be stickers? An SDK for apps to run inside your chat? Social graph widgets to invite my friends to chat? A pair of glasses that I can use for hands free HN chat? An Alexa skill for chat? :-P

All kidding aside congrats on your launch!

Look forward to your blog posts (and maybe source) with more detail as this has been a topic of interest for me off and on over recent years.

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#32

Post by grzm »

todd3834 wrote: post #30
grzm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reiterate your parent: please don't do this. Scraping a resource for email addresses and sending unsolicited email would be understood by a lot of people as spam. This would be different if they put something like the following in their profile: clap.chat: myemail@example.com Edit: spelling

> Scrapping a resource for email addresses and sending unsolicited email would be understood by a lot of people as spam We don't even want to dance the line with spam. Thanks for the feedback. What if when you try to message a user who hasn't signed up and it opens their profile page and the user can type in the email address manually if it is available. Then we don't have to pay for mechanical turk and the user is j…

I appreciate the dilemma: you understandably want to limit the friction in connecting HN members, and one of the means by which you're considering doing so has historically been abused so people are sensitive to it. I think 'zitterbewegung still has the right idea: it needs to be opt-in.

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#34

Post by foota »

grzm wrote: post #32
todd3834 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Scrapping a resource for email addresses and sending unsolicited email would be understood by a lot of people as spam We don't even want to dance the line with spam. Thanks for the feedback. What if when you try to message a user who hasn't signed up and it opens their profile page and the user can type in the email address manually if it is available. Then we don't have to pay for mechanical turk and the user is j…

I appreciate the dilemma: you understandably want to limit the friction in connecting HN members, and one of the means by which you're considering doing so has historically been abused so people are sensitive to it. I think 'zitterbewegung still has the right idea: it needs to be opt-in.

I don't see an issue with having a user type in an email address from someone's profile. Like the parent says in this case they're basically just using clapchat as their email client. Perhaps they could even set-up an SMTP gateway such that hn users could receive clapchats from emails sent to them @clapchat.io or whatever. Then maybe in the email they send have a tasteful link to also sign-up for clapchat.

Edit: upon thinking about it more, it might be better to randomly generate an address used for each conversation, to prevent a spammer from sending email to someone's @clapchat address

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#35

Post by ramzyo »

todd3834 wrote: post #25
zitterbewegung wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do this I really would want this opt in . If I were you I would disregard the message .

I'm very sensitive to this issue as a long time HN user I don't want to get spammed. However, as I was brainstorming this I came to this conclusion: If you put your email address in your HN profile you are opting in to people being able to reach you. ClapChat will just be a client for doing that easily and we will do everything to make sure a bot can't abuse this. For starters, you have to be authenticated to send a…

ClapChat sounds really cool and I can definitely see myself using it. To give my two cents here, I just made an HN account yesterday and my interpretation of HN's policy regarding emails is not that by entering an email you are agreeing to the possibility of being contacted by other users. I don't have an email in my profile now and the banner at the top of my profile page says "Please put a valid address in the email field, or we won't be able to send you a new password if you forget yours. Your address is only visible to you and us. Crawlers and other users can't see it." To me, that means that by entering an email address I'd only ever be contacted for password resets.

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#36

Post by todd3834 »

ramzyo wrote: post #35
todd3834 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very sensitive to this issue as a long time HN user I don't want to get spammed. However, as I was brainstorming this I came to this conclusion: If you put your email address in your HN profile you are opting in to people being able to reach you. ClapChat will just be a client for doing that easily and we will do everything to make sure a bot can't abuse this. For starters, you have to be authenticated to send a…

ClapChat sounds really cool and I can definitely see myself using it. To give my two cents here, I just made an HN account yesterday and my interpretation of HN's policy regarding emails is not that by entering an email you are agreeing to the possibility of being contacted by other users. I don't have an email in my profile now and the banner at the top of my profile page says "Please put a valid address in the emai…

That is correct. We cannot see that email. The only email people would see is one you put in your bio section. See my profile for an example

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#37

Post by kowdermeister »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #20

What happens if I want to PM someone but they're still not signed up for ClauChat? You should probably also answer this on your page.

My suggestion would be that the extension should display a speech bubble icon next to the usernames their service recognizes.

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#39

Post by truebosko »

todd3834 wrote: post #11
zaroth wrote: post #10

Just a thought on the auto-login functionality... If I run an intercepting proxy and alter all instances of my username in the HTML response from HN servers to appear in every way to be logged in as 'dang'.... How would your extension detect the forgery?

Glad you asked! So here is a teaser on how it works: 1. ClapChat gives you a unique id, the extension posts the id in your profile, ClapChat independently verifies that your profile contains the correct ID so that we know you really do own the account, then we double check the ID vs the session that we gave the id to and we can validate the authorization. I'm working on a blog post that goes into much further detail…

Neat. I remember my days on Something Awful Forums and many did the same thing for various integrations. Ten years later the technique still works.

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#40

Post by mattnewton »

todd3834 wrote: post #30
grzm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reiterate your parent: please don't do this. Scraping a resource for email addresses and sending unsolicited email would be understood by a lot of people as spam. This would be different if they put something like the following in their profile: clap.chat: myemail@example.com Edit: spelling

> Scrapping a resource for email addresses and sending unsolicited email would be understood by a lot of people as spam We don't even want to dance the line with spam. Thanks for the feedback. What if when you try to message a user who hasn't signed up and it opens their profile page and the user can type in the email address manually if it is available. Then we don't have to pay for mechanical turk and the user is j…

I think that forwarding them to their profile page, which is under their control and public is totally reasonable. It means less work for you and no less control for the users.
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