Comment by onwardly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by onwardly | Hacker News Reader

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This comment, like many others, is pretty critical of using FB Connect exclusively, which is something I understand and why I posed the question in the first place.

It may help to provide a little more context. The reason that FB Connect is used exclusively is to solve the pervert problem that has plagued videochat applications.

The FB account is used ONLY to track users, and on the landing page we make it very clear that we never reveal your identity to anyone and that we never post anything to your wall or your friends' walls.

We use the FB login so that if you are reported for misusing the site we can block you permanently. The thinking is that if we just allow you to create a new account or login with different accounts, then the pervs will be able to continue to access the site even if they are blocked on one account.

On the other hand, I'm getting the sense that this could be a big problem for legitimate users. Perhaps having multiple sign-in options would be OK, assuming that if you're a perv you'd be wary of signing in using your real account info, and that you'd really be going out of your way to be a jackass if you waited til one account was blocked before and then signed in using another account.

I'm surprised that the HN community seems more averse to using FB connect than I expect most normal users are. Either that or people that are critical of FB Connect are more apt to respond to this.

Lots of food for thought though. Ultimately, the question is whether offering multiple sign-in options dilutes the security feature of being able to permanently block those who misuse the site. While it does dilute this slightly, I'm starting to think that the trade-off might be worth it if only allowing a FB sign-in is so repulsive to so many...

Okay. Blocking perverts is a legitimate cause and being able to ban people effectively is probably easier than implementing feature extraction from video.

However, people can make throwaway facebook accounts just as they can make throwaway twitter/Google/OpenID accounts. So, if you want something more effective, you could either:

* make a video chat that is not free-for-all. Back in the day, ICQ with video chat turned into a circlejerk because anyone could contact anyone. On Skype, people who you don't know cannot contact you by default, so it doesn't have that problem, but feels more like a videophone than a chat.

* use more elaborate rules: use the sender IP to recognize duplicate sign-ins, with an option of contacting support if you're caught wrongly by the ruleset.

* Provide an outlet for the circlejerk people so they can be among themselves (i.e., like having a /b/ on 4chan so the other channels can be civilized most of the time). For example, have a "ban this user" function that bans that user for the person only, but have a default that contact requests from people who are banned by three different users are denied unless they're in your "friends" group. Have an option to change the threshold so that perverts can still play pervert in front of other perverts.

* provide some kind of "namespace" and appoint trusted people as moderators for parts of that namespace (e.g., have a channel HorsesLovers that has its group of moderators). Having moderators per channel allows (i) people to develop a sense of responsibility for "their" channel, but also (ii) to limit any kind of dictator-like behaviour.

* I was considering whether asking for some sort of micropayment (i.e., pay 2$ or have someone invite you) would solve the problem, but I guess there's enough perverts with deep pockets that it'd only be a partial solution.

With Facebook, the way it would work is that you have to have 20+ friends to join. So you can create throwaway accounts, but you won't be able to login with them.

That said, it really would be going out of your way to create a throwaway account every time you wanted to be a pervert for just two people. That requires a lot of effort, and while there may be a few people willing to endure it, I doubt it would reach the same level of problems as it has on Chatroulette and co.

What's wrong with IP blocking? It's easier to get a Facebook account with 20 friends than it is to change your IP (depending on your ISP).

It's definitely a bit more effort, but doesn't that just mean I'd need 21 fake accounts and have them all 'friend' each other?

Some people never reach 20+ "friends" on FB... who's to say what's the right limit to the number of "friends"?

I'm surprised that the HN community seems more averse to using FB connect than I expect most normal users are. Either that or people that are critical of FB Connect are more apt to respond to this.

You're probably seeing both effects here. As a moderately tech-savvy person, I've got just enough information to be dangerous -- I know that there are/have been missteps with facebook sharing information (and there was that business with sites automatically publishing purchases to your feed) but I don't know enough to know exactly what is/isn't safe. So I err on the side of caution. Someone who hasn't seen the headlines in the tech press might not be as cautious.

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