[HN Gopher] Show HN: Radiopaper - Troll-resistant public convers...
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Show HN: Radiopaper - Troll-resistant public conversations
Hi HN! We're a bootstrapped team of 4 and have been building
Radiopaper for around 16 months alongside other full-time, part-
time, and consulting jobs. I wanted to highlight a couple of the
unique characteristics of Radiopaper that may not be immediately
apparent when browsing https://radiopaper.com/explore * It's
possible to interact with Radiopaper entirely by email, and never
log-in interactively. The notification emails contain context that
explains that if you reply to the email, your message will be
published on https://radiopaper.com * The key mechanism that makes
Radiopaper different from other social networks, and more resistant
to trolling and abuse, is that messages are not published until the
counterparty replies or accepts your comment. You can read more
about this in our manifesto at https://radiopaper.com/about The
technical stack is a Vue/TypeScript app talking to an API backend
written in Go, running on Cloud Run, and using Firestore for
persistence, Firebase Auth for authentication. Email processing is
handled through the Gmail API hooked up to a Cloud Pubsub
notification which triggers another Cloud Run service. Outbound
emails go through SendGrid. The whole stack "scales-to-zero", and
on days that we have a few hundred active users, we're still under
the free limits of Firebase Hosting, Cloud Run & Firestore, so this
has allowed us to operate for a long time without funding or
revenue. Our overall burn rate is around $40/month, mostly from the
smattering of other SaaS offerings we use: Sentry, Mixpanel, Github
& SendGrid. Dave & I discuss our tech stack in a little more
detail in this conversation:
https://radiopaper.com/conversation/4PsvfxLX2Q5NHLBs8nuN The team
(myself, daave, davidschaengold, youngnh) will be around to answer
any questions!
Author : evnp
Score : 84 points
Date : 2022-04-29 21:18 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (radiopaper.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (radiopaper.com)
| linkdd wrote:
| > The key mechanism that makes Radiopaper different from other
| social networks, and more resistant to trolling and abuse, is
| that messages are not published until the counterparty replies or
| accepts your comment.
|
| My mind is blown at how simple and elegant this solution is!
|
| Great work there.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| The idea is promising, and the design is good, too.
|
| Hoping this works out!
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| This seems more like a Facebook wall where you approve each post.
| The design looks good from what I can tell, not sure it you have
| apps or if this is open source, but in terms of making a company
| out of this it seems like little value compared to free
| alternatives that already exist. With email, I can already create
| white lists. Also, what is to stop a group of accounts from
| spamming someone with requests?
|
| Mastodon let's you filter people and block them as well, and
| there are plenty of similar apps that provide actions to create
| and filter groups of conversations.
| leakbang wrote:
| This looks pretty cool! It feels like a new take on the idea of
| mailing lists. One suggestion that came to my mind, is to have
| the ability for viewers to subscribe to conversations. It could
| be either through Email notifications or RSS.
| evnp wrote:
| Fantastic suggestions, thanks - we have a notifications system
| on our road map but are still formulating the exact mechanics.
| We would also love to support RSS! One of many things that we
| will try to get to soon.
| [deleted]
| _alaeri wrote:
| How can someone get involved in the project? Do you plan to hire
| soon? Do you plan to develop mobile apps?
|
| Working on a project that aims to improve online discussions is
| my current long term career goal.
|
| The "counterpart accepting your contribution" filter seems neat
| and simple.
| evnp wrote:
| A worthy goal indeed! We are very much looking at expansion of
| the team, as there are a number of additional features we'd
| like to roll out to strengthen the product (including a
| stronger mobile offering). We're exploring options for funding
| Radiopaper so we can kick it into high gear.
| duck wrote:
| I found this exchange super helpful in understanding what
| Radiopaper is:
| https://radiopaper.com/conversation/K5opCylqOizaZ0HQCB5Q/ots...
|
| This feels like something that would be hard to get traction
| with, but hats off on trying to do something different and
| thinking through what social could be. Also, love the design and
| UX - great stuff!
| Klonoar wrote:
| Just wanted to comment and say that the design is a breath of
| fresh air. It feels in some ways similar to the startups of 10
| years ago while still feeling modern and readable.
|
| I feel like, by avoiding some of the modern UI/UX landing page
| trends, it feels more authentic when I land there. I like it.
| davidschaengold wrote:
| Thank you -- we wanted the design to communicate that
| Radiopaper is offering something quite different. "A breath of
| fresh air" is exactly what we hoped for!
| V__ wrote:
| I hope I'm not missing something, but am I understanding it
| correctly: Messages between two people are publicly viewable, and
| then it's possible for other people to comment on them?
|
| I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around a general use case
| then. It seems like a neat idea for discussions or debates
| between two people which have public value.. but most of the time
| when I'm writing directly to someone, why would I want to have it
| shared? Looking at other social networks, most of the time you
| want to share something with your social circle and generate a
| conversation which has more than two people or you message them
| directly. Am I missing something?
| leakbang wrote:
| I've been browsing the site a little bit and I've got a question.
| Who is this or what is this for? I couldn't think of a personal
| use case for it so I'm asking out of curiosity.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| This is very neat! The premise (1-1 convos, messages published
| only on reply) is pretty unique.
|
| It's not at all clear to me how that premise is going to lead to
| more civil conversations, but I am 100% behind people trying out
| different online conversation mechanics and seeing what falls out
| of them.
|
| Stack overflow, 4chan, twitter, every phpBB ever... the
| communities they developed were all heavily influenced by the
| mechanics of interacting with them. I strongly believe that
| there's plenty of solution space left to explore with the problem
| of "how do we design interaction mechanics to produce the
| community we want." I applaud anyone exploring that solution
| space!
| Etheryte wrote:
| This looks like an interesting idea. A twist on mailing lists
| with a web facing interface. One thing I couldn't figure out, are
| all threads one-on-one? Or is it possible to have threads with
| many people in them?
|
| A small technical nitpick, it seems cache headers are not set
| correctly for images and such right now. When you scroll up and
| down the homepage, the same images get re-requested again and
| again. Out of curiosity, why are the top items unrendered when
| scrolling down?
| brk wrote:
| It looks like you can add to an existing conversation, there is
| a link on the right-side.
| evnp wrote:
| This is also correct, you can comment on any message in an
| existing conversation. The same publication rules apply here
| - this spins off a new one-on-one conversation with the
| message's author.
| evnp wrote:
| Yes, all the threads are one-on-one. We've toyed with the idea
| of group discussions, but haven't landed on what the path
| forward is there just yet.
|
| Thanks for highlighting the image caching issue, we'll look
| into it! As for the scrolling behavior, we render a sliding-
| window of rows to keep DOM size down, but the UX does need some
| work.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Is this an option for blog comments or something that is
| standalone? I'm on mobile and the interface looks pretty, but
| seems a little strange. I'm being exposed to the middle of
| conversations and missing the lede. Like walking into a room and
| having no clue what 2 people are chatting about.
| [deleted]
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > The key mechanism that makes Radiopaper different from other
| social networks, and more resistant to trolling and abuse, is
| that messages are not published until the counterparty replies or
| accepts your comment.
|
| Isn't this the same thing as protecting your tweets and
| restricting who can tag you and reply to your tweets?
| cormacrelf wrote:
| That's a very interesting question, and not one I have thought
| about before. Thank you for asking it, it has added a new
| dimension to my thinking and I will tell my grandchildren about
| your incisive inquiry. No. Do you see how you described a
| system based on identity, whereas this forces you to review
| individual comments before they're published? There's no way on
| Twitter to request the ability to reply.
|
| Edited to add the kind of fake boilerplate that seems to gush
| from every message on there in order to encourage acceptance.
| karencarits wrote:
| I enjoy the design; clean and simple! Somehow, the initials in
| red reminds me of liturgical texts
|
| Also, I love the approach with close integration with mails - I
| think it is strange that the mail protocol isn't more widely used
| - having my own copies of the conversations, easily searchable
| and exportable, is a huge advantage!
| davidschaengold wrote:
| Thank you! We felt that it was really important to get the
| design right, and I'm glad that you found it clean and simple.
| You're absolutely right that we were inspired by the graphic
| design of old breviaries and liturgical books.
|
| Email is in some ways like a whole hidden social internet. A
| lot of people use email who have no interest in Twitter,
| Facebook, etc. And many of those people are really interesting.
| Radiopaper provides a way for them to have public conversations
| online without having to learn a new technology, and without
| having to worry about what might end up associated with their
| online presence in the absence of active management.
| tksmith151 wrote:
| Do you have plans for bots / bot networks that can simulate a
| conversation between two or more people? I do think the overall
| premise is interesting though and can see how it might deter
| undesired content from taking over your social network.
| evnp wrote:
| Thanks for the question!
|
| There's certainly a risk that some kinds of abuse patterns will
| get through our reply-to-publish model. Eventually we'd like to
| try and detect bot traffic and challenge them with a CAPTCHA or
| similar.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Relevant and timely. Bravo!
| evnp wrote:
| Thanks very much!
| russdpale wrote:
| This looks like a bloody brilliant idea thus far. I'm curious as
| to how you guys approach implementing some of the traditional
| social media experiences (likes, follows, retweets, etc). There
| are so many things to consider.. I was telling my BIL, who is a
| psychiatrist, that we as devs don't do enough to include other
| voices from other experts in the dev process.. It seems like many
| of the traditional social media functions could be more harmful
| then helpful, both individually and as an unhealthy group
| dynamic. Perhaps simple changes can make big impacts, such as
| approving people to follow you when they request it, and the
| option of turning off new follow requests altogether.
|
| It's interesting I see this project, because I've long thought
| the problem with social media is that everyone can talk to
| everyone and anyone at any time. Like everyone is in a giant
| stadium with access to the PA to announce themselves... and
| everyone in the stadium can use it all at the same time. Real
| life doesn't work this way. While unfettered communication is
| nice, it is also overwhelming and positive and healthy
| communication needs filters and topics and such.
|
| I'll definitely be watching this app and hopefully using it.
| There is a lot of opportunity here. I really enjoy the clean and
| simple interface. Personally, I think this is probably the best
| social media app and idea I've seen come through HN in a long
| time.
|
| A 'contact me' button which quick copies a link would be a nice
| addition.
| freemint wrote:
| I found it quiet unapproachable to find people i might want to
| interact with. Can you describe how one is supposed to discover
| who one wants to interact with?
| daave wrote:
| Thanks for taking a look! For now there are two ways to find an
| interlocutor:
|
| 1. Send a message to someone you already know, using their
| email address.
|
| 2. Comment on or start a conversation with someone whose post
| you find interesting.
|
| We expect to add more features around discovering both users
| and conversations in the future.
| csilverman wrote:
| Looks like a cool idea, but I'm having trouble signing in.
| Clicking the link in the email just bounces me back to the
| website, where I'm still logged out.
|
| I like the idea that messages only appear after they've been
| approved by the receiving party. That's pretty clever.
| evnp wrote:
| Sorry about that! Would you be able to let us know which
| browser and device you're using?
|
| We're seeing some errors come in through Sentry about Firebase
| auth being unable to persist things in local storage, that may
| be what's going here. We'll keep digging!
| csilverman wrote:
| Thank you! This is happening on iOS 14.5.1, in Safari. I'm on
| an iPhone XS.
| evnp wrote:
| Thanks again for the bug report. We've managed to get
| someone on the team to reproduce the issue, it seems login-
| by-email doesn't work correctly in Safari for iOS. We found
| that after you click the email login link, it'll appear
| you're logged out, but once you refresh the page, you'll be
| logged in.
|
| We'll work on getting this squared away, but in the mean
| time, perhaps try the refresh- workaround; or a different
| browser or OAuth login method.
| Apreche wrote:
| > is that messages are not published until the counterparty
| replies or accepts your comment
|
| Ok, this is a really smart idea.
|
| Can you just please add a link to your about page on your home
| page? without this posting, I never would have found it.
| evnp wrote:
| Sorry it's a little hard to find - if you hover your cursor at
| the bottom of any page there'll be a link to the "about" and
| "policies" pages, https://radiopaper.com/about
| Apreche wrote:
| Oh, there it is!
| mleonhard wrote:
| Have ideas about UX and developer productivity? Message me on
| Radiopaper:
| https://radiopaper.com/user/K3ST04CaOZV4XwHThdMY3rOY8Rq2
| daave wrote:
| Michael,
|
| So glad that you're excited to use the platform.
|
| Would you like a custom alias (radiopaper.com/MichaelLeonhard
| or similar)? At the moment we provision those manually, on-
| demand.
|
| We saw your message to Socrates, I'm afraid he's not around to
| reply today, so it'll likely remain unpublished.
| evnp wrote:
| A few obvious gaps to highlight that we're actively working on:
|
| * The OAuth scopes for login with Twitter are overly broad. This
| appears to be a limitation of Firebase Auth's SDK, it only
| supports the Twitter OAuth 1.0 API, whereas Twitter only provides
| more fine-grained scopes if we use OAuth 2. We're looking into
| whether we can make changes to Firebase Auth to contribute
| upstream that would let us request email addresses without
| permission to view your timeline, followers, etc.
|
| * There are a few quirks with our UX on mobile devices, and
| Comments are not visible on mobile. We've focused on the desktop
| experience for reading and writing at first, but a lot of our
| users do come to us on Mobile, so making this better is a high
| priority.
|
| * We're missing a lot of the standard social features you might
| expect from an app like this: following, reactions, @-mentions,
| topics, search, etc. These and many others are on our roadmap,
| but as a bootstrapped team trying to maintain a high quality bar,
| we're moving on them pretty slowly.
| Crazyontap wrote:
| This idea is good, design is awesome. Here is a little feedback
|
| 1. It needs categories. I don't feel motivated to read most of
| the conversations but if those were related to my interest i
| definitely would.
|
| 2. users should be able to add some bios, who are these people.
|
| 3. where it says you can start a conversation there could be a
| list of experts in my category i can send the question to, not
| popular people but people who have posted a lot in that category.
| this can be quora without the spam!
| BWStearns wrote:
| Love the design and after reading the post that @duck linked to
| it clicked. Not sure how to elevator pitch the concept more
| efficiently but the email interaction mechanism might be viral
| enough to not have to really sell people on the idea. Super cool,
| hope it keeps growing and you can't fit in the free tier anymore!
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