The Catholics have had that for thousands of years. So maybe there is something to it.
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?
What would stop it from becoming 4chan?
If a room becomes toxic, people simply stop entering it.
How would this have stopped 4chan? People still go to those toxic message boards.
There are so many ways for this to become incredibly toxic and unhelpful, my first thought is it could become a support group for all types criminals/abusers to share tips and tricks anonymously.
At least the Catholics and therapists have someone there trying to steer things in a helpful direction. Like maybe you could tweak this idea to anonymous therapy rather than anonymous confession, and then people could view people going through therapy online and maybe find helpful tips for their own lives.
There is a conflict still. First, you want unfiltered confession meaning no moderation. But then you don't want it to become a safe space for criminals, which would require moderating. If you don't moderate the content, it'll quickly take on a life of its own and that won't be the helpful thing you're imagining.
I kind of foresee this ending with rooms getting spammed with posts that break the rules since the people doing it don't have any sort of barrier of reentry.
I understand the intention but it's important to be realistic about what the actual outcomes are. Is there anything stopping extremists from basically just flooding all rooms with hate?
Moderation kinda depends on identity, as the trolls who want every room to be toxic will enter every room and make sure it's toxic if there's no rudimentary identification.
If it’s using an expiring session-based anonymous “account” for interactions, how would you ban someone? Or allow rooms to be restricted, for that matter?
Like I like the idea, I just don’t understand how both things can be true.
Sure, but if nobody knows who anyone is, how do you know who to let in?
Set up Tor and make a chat confession group and you're pretty much there
If it's public it doesn't disappear. People will make copies.
You could have a home site or group and multiple sub groups though.
So no logging IP addresses of people posting or anything like that?
Not to shit on your idea, but why would anyone want to read such things in the first place? I get the need to get something off your chest, but I don't get why someone would be interested in hearing it?
Yeah and the catholics are the most moral and good people around.
Who the fuck sees Catholicism as a proof of success?
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.
I don't know why you're using the past tense, the church is still defending them.
The church used to defend pedos. They still do, but they used to too.
And the church used those confessions to control things.
Yea I was going to say… for blackmail!
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.
Well, there's actually been research into it.
Since that shit is dry as hell, and there's available articles about it, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/202202/why-it-feels-so-good-confess
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
Maybe could say it's a Pastafarian ritual for the same legal protection as confession in Christian religions?
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.
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
That might be a good way to go about it, and it's easier to moderate too
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.
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.
I absolutely wouldn’t post anything online I wouldn’t feel comfortable having read out in front of a judge.
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)
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. Which is why anonymous confessions are always more dubious than anything else. I don't think earnest anonymous confessions are bad though.
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.
This idea reminds me of https://postsecret.com/. I don't know if it's helpful, but it's interesting.
How about curation though? Having been on the internet for some decades, I can see something like this uncurated go one of two ways - wholesome as fuck or completely unhinged.
Sadly people have getting more and more wild with their actual name and image attached over the last few years, but I like the initiative and hope that a wholesome spirit sets in quickly to make it a light on the otherwise muddy internet.
What about slop machine infestation prevention? Or is that something to work with further down the line?
One-line confessions with no profiles removes most incentives for bots or farming.
I… let's just say that I do not believe you will find this assertion holds up.
If you show up in Google, you will get spam. I host and admin https://forum.simutrans.com/- a forum for a somewhat obscure/old opensource free game. We constantly deal with spam (although at present, I've found a mix of things that have so far just about cut it out for now, but they will eventually learn).
Maybe you'll be a unicorn; I just doubt you will be. :)
Likes, comments and general engagement, or just the one line thought? I'd think less engagement also will help to keep it a good place. What do you plan there?
My thought as well. Getting more and more on board and would frequent as both reader and contributer.
I like your optimism and hope you are right. Keep us posted on the projects development!
It’s been done with real postcards. Not that you can’t try a different take.
This site has been around since 2004:
Just don’t open it to comments. People don’t need that and it’ll get ugly.
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?
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.
It's been done: https://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.
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.
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.
Cathartic maybe, coin flip on whether it's therapeutic or not.
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.
I'm sorry Lord, I farted earlier, in church, but couldn't apologize, as we were having a prayer..
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?
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
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.
Would it actually be healthier if people had a place to post these thoughts completely anonymously?
No identity. No profile. Just the confession.
I've been thinking about this too, so much, ever since I joined lemmy!!
But I’m honestly curious if people would actually use something like that or if most secrets are better left unsaid.
I would 100% use the shit out of this. Make it more than 1 line, though.
As for your main question, i think it is good. It's a tradition, really, which suggests it has always been of some benefit to people. Maybe confessing to friends or a psychotherapist (or even a catholic priest) is better because of the advice aspect, the intimacy and the courage it takes.
TL;DR heavy thoughts are best shared with others.
Some questions about backroom (if you have time or an answer to them):
- Would it allow comment engagement, or do we just confess to the ether?
Would it avoid DM systems so as to prevent people collaborating for criminal activity?[I see you put 'no illegal things'] What are some ideas you have that would ensure/encourage no illegal things to be posted?- Doesn't that largely limit the amount of confessions people might post?
- Would it have megathreads for when people keep on posting the same stuff (e.g "I have always found my cousin really hot")
Check out the "game" Kind Words, kind of a similar concept.
Afaik it is anonymous (to other users if not to the devs, I also haven't played the sequel), 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.
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 right 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.
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.
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.
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.
I’d worry that people who shouldn’t see those confessions would be able to access them.
It’s called an alt account on Reddit
Or you can still go to a priest if you want to embrace tradition
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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