It feels at times like the big hitters win—the Apples, the Googles of the world. But honestly, it’s simply the price one has to pay for access. I can live with that. For now, that is.
Requesting Moderation
Up until two days ago, I was breaking my head over how we could implement some practical moderation for Hive Snaps. I realize to some people right now, to hardcore Hivean purists (like myself), I’m being heretical. But we have to operate in reality.
There’s no way we’re getting approved by Apple without this feature. We have to do it if we want access to their users. I don’t know this to be a fact, but I suspect @good-karma knows a lot about this subject, and I hope at some point he and I can share a good talk. At any rate, I have to give the credit for this idea to my friend @mengao.
Moderation with No Backend
Before
After
The answer was so simple I had to laugh when @mengao shared it with me. What if @snapie’s downvotes were basically a tag of sorts to hide the Snap?
In other words: if @snapie downvotes someone for, let’s say, doxing or another big no-no, then our app simply does not display the post.
All we’d need to do is check whether a snap, reply, or post includes a downvote from @snapie, our App Mascot. Simple, and genius, because it requires no backend at all.
Reporting Snaps
This is the next piece of the puzzle, and I’m working on it right now: a simple button for people to report an illegal snap. Keep in mind, the idea is to hide illegal things—not things people just disagree with.
Users of the app will be able to report a snap for the typical reasons one sees on Web2:
- Inciting violence
- Impersonation / Scams
- Harmful Content
- Other (with explanation required)
It’s going to take the community’s effort to keep Snaps a good place to hang out, and I’ll be counting on people to report such things.
A simple bot will pick up these custom JSON operations, these reports, and feed a webhook into our Discord server for review.
Yes, It’s a Compromise
But again, it’s a toll we must pay if we want to be at the party where the people gather.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I’m okay with this. The idea of Hive Snaps is not to be the app people live and die on, but rather a gateway into our ecosystem. They’ll most definitely discover Peakd, since Snaps is a feature of theirs, and from there the sky’s the limit.
We just have to be a little sneaky, that’s all…
MenO
You know this is on the blockchain? 😁
So, once a community member reports a post as illegal, who will make a decision as to whether the content is legal or not and then flag it or not? I propose some sort of Hive Snaps community governance to agree upon who (a voted in moderator group perhaps, who need to reach consensus to request snappie to flag) makes the decision.
Also, there should be an appeals procedure IMO. so if snapie flags a post, it should be accompanied by a comment stating reason for flagging the post, and how to appeal.
i like your idea... for now, i would only flag literally illegal things. Like doxing someone, or calling for someone's death... extreme stuff. I'm pretty close to being a freedom of speech absolutist actually. I just don't want to get the app pulled from the store, more so if it takes so much to get them to approve it.
Would you add the "report" button to android too?
yeah, its very much like the twitter three dots drop down menu... same app, both platforms.
I'm crossing my fingers for you, hope you made enough feature changes for them. Have you considered distributing "publicly" via TestFlight in the meantime? It will take a while to reach 10k installs, and until then you won't have to go through all these hoops. Apart from that, Apple have a history of approving something, and then months or even years later suddenly starting to not like one or more of your core features (that you've had in there forever). It all depends on the reviewer...
its already in testflight, we have about 30 people on apple devices using it right now... anyone can drop us their email on discord and I'll add them. 10k users is pretty good imo, so even if apple plays hard to get, we can still jam for a while.
funny enough, recently i got an email from google. Seems like they wont allow side loading as of next year.
At least in the past there was a way of allowing users to download from Testflight without prior email whitelisting. A lot of crypto projects used this to distribute their apps, as nobody was really expecting more than 10k downloads quickly. Does this not work anymore? It's been a while since I last used Testflight for distribution
yeah, we have to add their emails on our side, and then they can download. its been the reason why some people have hesitated. Keeping their emails secret seems important to them, and of course: who am I to disagree with a personal preference?
"Developers can enable a "public link" which allows a wider group of testers to join a beta test without needing individual email invitations, but you still need to access this specific link to download the app"
Got this from Gemini. Will check on my Testflight account later if that's still the case.
Yep, still works like this:
Perhaps consider #nsfw filtering.
oh wow... why didn't i think of that... you are right... dude
I guess you're not kinky enough ;)
lol 🤣
Do enough people use tags in snaps for the filter to work?
Not sure, I don't really browse Snaps lately. They should, though, else they might get downvoted.
Remember, if people really want the full uncensored blockchain, they can learn to use web frontends. It's still here.
that's exactly right!
Let's hope that no Apple LLM will crawl through HIVE content then... 😅 They'd definitely wonder where the moderators are and why people can speak their mind, and why humor still exists and not everyone is offended by everything.
All kidding apart, we have to make compromises, always, in everything. As I mentioned on your brother's post - get the foot in the door, grow, and ditch them when big enough.
i really hope they don't find comb this thing... because im sure they will find something... hahaha we will see
If you can trust the moderation then it should be possible. Would you blacklist people if they abuse the feature? I know this is a tricky area.
good question.. i would have to. If someone is reporting posts in bad faith, I think i would have to blacklist them from reporting.
I would love to use this. It's awesome. I don't think it's a big deal to want to hide the bad stuff.
Wen android?
already delivered brother... go to our github and download the apk
If you follow @snapie you can find it all the updates, as they happen
but here
https://github.com/menobass/hivesnaps/releases/tag/v1.1.0
We only requested funding after delivering ;)
Cool, checking it out now!
Has the app been released on iOS yet? I know I could get early access through your Discord, but I'm asking anyway. :D
we are working on it brother... I think with the moderation we just added, we are going to get it passed... crossing my fingers.
I hope so, thanks. :)