Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨humanobserver@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

Serious question.

Most people carry things they never tell anyone.

Not illegal things. Just thoughts that would damage relationships or reputations if they were said out loud.

Regret about past decisions. Things people hide from partners. Thoughts about friends or family they would never admit publicly.

Therapists exist for a reason, but most people never go to one.

So I was wondering something.

Would it actually be healthier if people had a place to post these thoughts completely anonymously?

No identity. No profile. Just the confession.

I’m building a small experiment called Backroom around this idea where people can post one-line anonymous secrets.

But I’m honestly curious if people would actually use something like that or if most secrets are better left unsaid.

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RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
The Catholics have had that for thousands of years. So maybe there is something to it.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  That’s actually a really good point.
  
  Confession probably worked for centuries because people needed a place to say things they couldn’t say anywhere else.
  
  Backroom is basically trying to recreate that idea, just anonymously and without religion.
  
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  - Nomad@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    The church invented that to control the secrets in any congregation. So yeah, bad thing. Backroom sounds like a fun idea. How would you ensure peoples anonymity and privacy? How would you fund this?
    
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- Solumbran@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Yeah and the catholics are the most moral and good people around.
  
  Who the fuck sees Catholicism as a proof of success?
  
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  - meco03211@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    To be fair, their version also came with forgiveness and absolution. So I’m sure plenty of pedos confessed their sins only to be told, “say a few hail Mary’s, and try not to do it again. But as far as god is concerned, it’s like it never happened.” So they could convince themselves they did nothing wrong.
    
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- minorkeys@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  And the church used those confessions to control things.
  
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  - architect@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Yea I was going to say… for blackmail!
    
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NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Just a warning on running a service like this - any website that allows arbitrary text entry from anonymous users will be found and flooded by bots very quickly.

The most innocent, least damaging version of what happens is adbots posting links to shoddy websites selling “essential oils” and other homeopathy nonsense.

More obscure but more malicious, text posts are used to control botnets for cybercrime. Basically a human running the botnet will post a string of letters and numbers to a website which the bots have been programmed to look for instructions. Websites that allow anonymous text entry are convenient for this because if the criminal activity is investigated, it’s hard to trace the instructions from the controller back to a real person.

Just be aware that people will abuse your service for purposes you did not intend. You’ll probably need both automated tooling for identifying and blocking bot traffic, as well as human moderation.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  That’s a really good point.
  
  Any anonymous input system will attract bots sooner or later.
  
  The experiment is partly about seeing how much structure (rooms, hosts, limited formats) changes that dynamic compared to open anonymous boards.
  
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southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Well, there’s actually been research into it.

Since that shit is dry as hell, and there’s available articles about it, psychologytoday.com/…/why-it-feels-so-good-confes…

This one gives a nice overview.

So, I’d say it’s pretty realistic to say that “confession” has mental health benefits.

That being said, true anonymity is going to be vital if you’re going to try to build something online. Not just for the people that might want to use it, but for you too. You really don’t want the legal issues if someone were to confess on your service and it became part of trial evidence. You may be thinking it’s not a big deal, that it’ll never happen, but it does happen already with social media.

The less you’ll be able to provide, the less hassle you’ll have. So keep that in mind. Reddit, Facebook, VPNs, they all deal with legal requests regularly, but they have legal departments to handle those to keep a barrier between the people running things and the consequences of users’ actions/words.

Me? No fucking way I’d even confess to jaywalking online, period. And I have never done that (that’s actually true, I’ve never been in a situation where it was useful. Small towns and infrequent visits to cities ftw?). I’d also advise anyone else to never do so.

Also, if you’re a priest/minister and your religion has a confessional seal, you have pretty robust legal protection about not having to break it, in many places. Therapists also have a degree of confidentiality that they’re legally required to maintain. Your online service has neither. So you’ll also have responsibilities above and beyond what therapists or ministers have. Well, you may, since local laws vary, and I’ve never heard of a lot of legal precedent around mandatory reporting for online services. But even if you aren’t currently required to report a range of things, not doing so might open you up to lawsuits and/or eager prosecutors looking to set a precedent.

I guess what it comes down to is: yeah, it could help people. But better you than me

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Those are really good points.
  
  The legal side is something I’ve been thinking about as well. The idea is to store as little as possible and avoid accounts entirely.
  
  But you’re right that anonymity online always has limits.
  
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- Venator@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Maybe could say it’s a Pastafarian ritual for the same legal protection as confession in Christian religions?
  
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otter@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
A few universities have “confessions” pages on facebook/reddit. I think a key requirement for your platform would be to set up some ground rules and have manual approval for each post.

Even then, you might start to see soapboxing and hate mongering in the longer posts that moderators don’t have the capacity to deal with.

The other solution would be to keep the person anonymous to readers, but not anonymous to the moderators, to prevent one person or entity from sending in a bunch of harmful posts. However, that comes with its own problems like data leaks harming legitimate users

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Yeah that seems to happen with a lot of confession pages.
  
  One thing I’m curious about is whether the format changes it. Short one-line posts tend to leave less room for soapboxing compared to long stories.
  
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  - otter@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    That might be a good way to go about it, and it’s easier to moderate too
    
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- VitoRobles@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Absolutely this.
  
  There was an anonymous confession page at my college and it became a place where people would share how they treat other students/staff like shit. And some were just hateful like “I’ll never date a [race]”.
  
  It kept going for years and was just a toxic place.
  
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CallMeAl@piefed.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
About 10 years ago there were several apps like that: Whisper, Secret, Yik Yak, etc. All faced controversy and went out of business. Today you have Hush.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Yes, a lot of them existed before.
  
  Most of them failed because identity, feeds, and social dynamics slowly took over.
  
  The idea here is to strip everything down so the confession stays the only thing that exists.
  
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underscores@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I think it’s healthy. There’s some growth as a human that can only be done through engagement. I consider it good for growth and mental health, especially if people can reply back and give you honest feedback (which being anonymous might help with)

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  That’s kind of the hope.
  
  Not therapy exactly, but a place where people can say something honestly and see how others react to it.
  
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Boozilla@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I have had similar thoughts. I certainly have some deep regrets that I never discuss. I wouldn’t feel comfortable putting them online, though.

PostSecret and /r/confession are/were like this.

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- Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I absolutely wouldn’t post anything online I wouldn’t feel comfortable having read out in front of a judge.
  
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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  That hesitation is exactly the interesting part.
  
  Most people have something they would never say publicly. The question is whether anonymity actually changes that.
  
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Fedizen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I think old school version of this is writing a letter then not sending it or burning it. Unsent letters are a historical gold mine.

More importantly, the presence of an audience make it likely people will embellish or lie to get responses.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  That’s a fair point.
  
  Once there’s an audience people start performing.
  
  One reason I’m testing very short one-line confessions is to reduce that effect. Less room for storytelling, more just the raw thought.
  
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LordMayor@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It’s been done with real postcards. Not that you can’t try a different take.

This site has been around since 2004:

https://postsecret.com

Just don’t open it to comments. People don’t need that and it’ll get ugly.

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- FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  
  Just don’t open it to comments. People don’t need that and it’ll get ugly.
  
  Doesn’t it just not feel like confessing at that point? Maybe I’m just an attention whore?
  
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  - LordMayor@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Nah. The therapeutic effect is from the confession not from the shitty advice or even confirmation or absolution.
    
    Everyone wants attention. It’s one of our basic needs. But, it’s better for you to get it from positive things. Getting it from negative things is like getting your calories from soft drinks.
    
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  - humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Sometimes people just want to say something once without it becoming part of their identity.
    
    That’s different from attention.
    
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solrize@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’d expect any online thing to be traced back to the person if it was juicy or otherwise usable as kompromat. There was just a news item about using LLM analysis to de-anonymize people, fwiw.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  That’s a fair concern.
  
  Absolute anonymity probably doesn’t exist anywhere online.
  
  The idea is more about minimizing identity: no profiles, no history, and posts not tied to accounts. If something leaks, it can’t expose a whole identity because there isn’t one attached.
  
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Ryoae@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I don’t think it is that healthy. You’d otherwise be screaming into yet another void.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  That’s actually the interesting part.
  
  Most places where people “vent” are basically voids.
  
  The idea behind Backroom was the opposite. Short anonymous confessions that people actually read and react to.
  
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Hoimo@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It’s been done: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_(app)

And more generally, anonymous message boards have been around for a very long time. I don’t really see what niche is left to fill. It’s also a huge risk to build a product around anonymity and controversial opinions. People will use it for illegal shit and you have to deal with that. At least 4chan has a small army of janitors to keep the site clean and posting controversial opinions isn’t even its entire identity.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  That’s fair. Apps like Whisper existed before and most slowly turned back into regular social feeds where identity and likes started to matter again.
  
  The experiment here is to remove as much of that as possible and see what people actually say when identity disappears.
  
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daychilde@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Network size will be the main problem. Many many many projects with delightful features have been deployed. Extremely few last because only a few people end up using them. Not to discourage you, but be prepared.

Also, consider how the service will be used for spam. I set up a simple link shortener a few years ago. Like 2015 or maybe earlier. I didn’t advertise it, but spammers still found it and abused it, so I had to take it down (too lazy to create a login system or anything, just decided to abandon it).

Especially an anonymous service will require moderation. Are you prepared to moderate it? Have to report certain illegal content to the proper authorities; and/or authorities might subpoena you for information about postings.

Again, things to consider.

Also, currently, people post to places like reddit and various other places already. So you want to figure out what makes your platform different, better, and attractive to audiences.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Good points honestly.
  
  Network effects are probably the hardest part of anything like this.
  
  That’s partly why I’m trying the “room” approach instead of one huge anonymous feed. Smaller spaces are easier to moderate and hopefully harder to spam.
  
  But yeah. If the confessions aren’t real or interesting the whole idea dies anyway.
  
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essell@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Well, it could go either way.

One of the reasons therapists exist is they’re not blank voids like the internet.

They can respond in human ways, be real and realistic. Help put the confession into context of a person’s life.

Without that, it’s a role of the dice. Some people will come away feeling lighter.

Some will come away with a sensation of having talked themselves into believing they’re a piece of ****.

I guess that’s why AITA is such a popular format.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  That’s the tradeoff.
  
  Therapists contextualize. Anonymous spaces reveal what people won’t contextualize anywhere else.
  
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  - essell@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Cathartic maybe, coin flip on whether it’s therapeutic or not.
    
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Mk23simp@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I think that it is probably good. On the other hand, I don’t think that you necessarily need to build something specifically for that purpose because the internet was basically built from the ground up with anonymity in mind. Some of the internet has moved away from that, but there’s still plenty of capability for people to be anonymous if they want to be.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  That’s true in theory.
  
  But most anonymous spaces today are still built around profiles, threads, or reputation.
  
  What I’m curious about is whether people behave differently when the post is literally the only thing that exists. No profile. No history. Just the confession itself.
  
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OriginEnergySux@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Can users talk to each other like with messages or is it like writing a letter in a bottle where there is no way to have a back and forth chat?

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Right now it’s closer to a message in a bottle.
  
  People can react or comment in the room, but it’s not meant to become private back-and-forth conversations between users.
  
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  - OriginEnergySux@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Ah ok, i like the message in a bottle style. I would think karma and other types of incentives for using the platform might defeat the purpose of it being a true and organic experience
    
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- golden_king@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  you can send messages to users on lemmy and reply back. but ig the instance owner can see them,thats why you use matrix and send your id to the user to chat with.
  
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forkDestroyer@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

Would it actually be healthier if people had a place to post these thoughts completely anonymously?

No identity. No profile. Just the confession.

I’m building a small experiment called Backroom around this idea where people can post one-line anonymous secrets.

Sounds like PostSecret but entirely online.

I’m sure there can be a lemmy sub for this, though, but I encourage you to keep building.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Yeah, PostSecret was actually one of the things that made me think about this.
  
  The difference I’m curious about is what happens when it becomes continuous instead of a curated project.
  
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over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’m sorry Lord, I farted earlier, in church, but couldn’t apologize, as we were having a prayer…

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- 666dollarfootlong@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  This you?
  
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BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It’s called an alt account on Reddit

Or you can still go to a priest if you want to embrace tradition

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Alt accounts still carry reputation though.
  
  The idea here is removing the profile entirely so the confession stands on its own.
  
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chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Check out the “game” Kind Words, kind of a similar concept.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Yeah, I know it. It’s a nice concept.
  
  The difference here would be that everything is anonymous and public by default. No profiles, just short confessions appearing and disappearing.
  
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  - chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Afaik it is anonymous (to other users if not to the devs), though not entirely public as there’s some opaque mechanism determining what you see or don’t see, and content isn’t visible to people who don’t have the game. Have you thought about strategies for sibyl resistance? This is a big thing I think it gets right, there is a built in filter, and simultaneously little incentive to maliciously bypass it.
    
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schwim@piefed.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Well, as they say, it takes all kinds but I wouldn’t want to be on either end of an anonymous confession of any magnitude.

I neither benefit from yelling my secrets into the void or reading someone else’s.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  That’s fair.
  
  Some people probably feel exactly that way.
  
  Others carry thoughts they would never attach to their name anywhere.
  
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  - schwim@piefed.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    
    Others carry thoughts they would never attach to their name anywhere.
    
    As do I, I guess the difference being that sharing that thought without self-attribution would serve me no better than keeping it safe inside.
    
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dvn@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
grouphug.us. Still have the book on a shelf today.

Some of it was just going after shock-factor, like confessing to screwing lightbulbs where the sun doesn’t shine. Some legitimate stuff, though.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Yeah that seems to happen a lot with anonymous spaces.
  
  Some people use them for shock value. Others actually say things they would never say anywhere else.
  
  The interesting part is what happens when identity disappears.
  
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Beth@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’d worry that people who shouldn’t see those confessions would be able to access them.

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- humanobserver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  That’s a fair concern.
  
  The idea is that there are no profiles and no identity attached, so the confession exists on its own without linking back to a person.
  
  It’s less about who reads it and more about removing the connection between the thought and the individual.
  
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j4k3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It is democratic. You have a right to all information, the right to error, the right to skepticism, and the right to protest in all nonviolent forms aka the right to offend others.

In this regime of rights, the right to skepticism is the fundamental. You have a tight to think for yourself. Authoritarianism is the opposite. Trust is its fulcrum and individual thought, belief, and access to information are not rights of individuals.

You cannot have democracy and citizens without outlets of free expression of all types. There is no way to know if some group is in collusion or spreading misinformation for various purposes. Having the right to anonymously express and check concerns in the public commons is absolutely critical to democracy. Any attempt to remove it is an attack on skepticism, the fundamental cornerstone of democracy that if removed causes total collapse.

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Paragone@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
1 time I found the Christian bible’s thing about benJoseph’s recommendation about confession..

It was fundamentally different from Catholic confession ( yes, this is related to your point ).

Confession was recommended, but it didn’t say confession to someone.

It may have implied confession to one’s team/community.

It absolutely did not orient any such thing to any church-official.

I’ve found that confessing to LivingSpirit helps.

Research has discovered that it doesn’t matter what one surrenders-to/relies-on, it can be a soccer-ball, an imaginary-friend, or LivingSpirit as I do, but doing that with someone ( from your perspective ) massively empowers lives in breaking addiction, as 1 objective change-in-life.

( see Baumeister’s “Willpower”, & note that while he gives what the evidence says, he rejects it, himself )

Confessing socially I consider narcissistic.

However, there’s another angle to it: it may help others to see that they’re not-alone in their failings.

& that is valuable.

There’s my answer answer for you.

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