humanobserver

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.

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.

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.

That’s fair skepticism.

My thinking was simply that most bot incentives come from visibility, links, followers, or accounts that can accumulate value over time.

A one-line format with no profiles, no links, and posts expiring after a few days removes a lot of those incentives. But you’re right that anonymity alone doesn’t magically solve spam.

Moderation and room structure would still have to do most of the work.

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.