humanobserver
@humanobserver@lemmy.world
- Comment on Do people actually need a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
People have always confessed things anonymously.
The internet just made the room bigger.
- Comment on Do people actually need a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
Yes, people can see them.
But the idea isn’t a forum or discussion board.
Posts are just one-line thoughts that disappear again. No profiles. No history. No threads.
More like dropping a thought somewhere and walking away.
- Comment on Do people actually need a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
That’s exactly the thought behind it.
Sometimes people don’t want advice or discussion. Just somewhere to drop the thought and move on.
- Comment on Do people actually need a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
Possible. I reposted it to see how different communities react. Curious if the idea still feels useful.
- Comment on Do people actually need a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
Privacy is definitely part of it.
But I’m also curious about the psychological side of it.
People often carry thoughts they never say anywhere. Not because they’re illegal or extreme, just because saying them would change how people see them.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to [deleted] | 10 comments
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
Hosts usually don’t decide based on identity.
Most rooms are just open and moderated through behavior. If someone posts things that break the rules the host can block that session from the room.
Restricted rooms are more like small spaces where the host simply decides who gets the link or approval to enter. The idea is control over the room not control over who someone is.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
Yeah that’s exactly the concern.
Once people start chasing karma or likes the confession stops being honest and starts becoming performance.
Part of the idea is to remove identity and incentives so the only thing left is the thought itself.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
Alt accounts still carry reputation though.
The idea here is removing the profile entirely so the confession stands on its own.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
Good question.
The sessions are temporary but not instantly disposable. A host can still block a session from a room, and rooms can require approval to enter.
So the anonymity is mostly between users. Hosts still have basic control over who can participate in their space.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
True. Anything public can be copied.
The idea isn’t perfect secrecy. It’s more about removing identity and permanence so people feel safer saying something once and letting it fade.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
Simplex is interesting.
The difference here would be that it’s not private messaging. The idea is short public confessions that appear in rooms and disappear again after a few days.
More like anonymous graffiti than a chat group.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
Good point.
The idea would be that rooms are moderated by hosts, and posts expire after a few days. That removes a lot of the long-term incentives for spam accounts.
It probably wouldn’t eliminate abuse entirely, but the structure makes it less rewarding.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
That’s a fair point.
The idea isn’t that anonymity magically solves trolling. It’s more that rooms create friction. If a host bans someone or locks access, that person doesn’t automatically get the same reach everywhere else.
In big anonymous feeds the trolls and normal users share the exact same space. Rooms try to break that dynamic a bit.
It probably won’t eliminate toxicity, but the hope is it localizes it.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
That’s fair.
Some people probably feel exactly that way.
Others carry thoughts they would never attach to their name anywhere.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
Yeah that’s probably the honest answer.
Some people just need the thought to exist somewhere outside their head.
Whether that helps or not probably depends on the person.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
IP addresses are only handled at the infrastructure level for basic abuse protection.
They are not connected to posts or identities and nothing is stored that could link a confession back to a person.
The whole design tries to separate the secret from the individual as much as possible.
- Comment on Is it actually healthy for people to have a place to confess things anonymously? 2 weeks ago:
Sometimes people just want to say something once without it becoming part of their identity.
That’s different from attention.