Show HN: Realness online – I made a social network for intimate friend groups | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Realness online – I made a social network for intimate friend groups

github.com

18 pointssfryxell9 comments

> Your information stays on your device. Realness tries to be as small as possible so that you can trust the affection it makes you feel.

They say your info stays on device, but your phone number is sent to Google to "authenticate" you. Such a shame to see misleading "philosophies" like these.

Also op, if you are the original author of the repo, you misspelled philosophy.

Thanks for the typo catch. I often misspell things. You are right that google get's your phone number as part of the authorization. That is all they get.

I need to authorize people somehow. I rejected email as it opens up a service to a profane level of attack vectors.

Phone numbers felt like a natural choice. And I chose firebase auth because I like their admin interface.

Beyond your name and phone number I collect no data other than your posts and your posters. I am the only social network that doesn't know what your relationships are.

Our philosophy is to be the minimal possible social network. Your name. Your phone number. some statements and posters.

Boom. pushed your typo catch

Very quick reaction, great work!

To your point about using google services to build products. I believe that idealogical purity as a false litmus test.

The service doesn't track you. Zero analytics.

Firebase is an excellent tool.

Also some of only have Junior college so typos are gonna be part of the deal.

Don't get me wrong, I use firebase all the time as well, I love it.

But I don't advertise my services saying that user's info stays on device, because I know I'm sending their info to a 3rd party, be it their emails, phone numbers, IPs and all that jazz.

When Google gets a leak of user info and all your user's phone numbers get exposed, how are you going to explain to them that their personal information got out through a third party when you promised that "data stays on device" ?

Maybe I should rephrase it to "the minimum possible data lives on the server". Because I can make and back that claim up.

phone number, statements, posters, events and that's it. only the pieces required to share.

I use no analytics. and store everything in static files. It all gets brought together on the phone.

Thanks for the feedback. This is exactly the kind of thing i was hoping to learn.

No worries man, projects like these are always fun to build and read about.

Maybe it would be nice to explicitly say what is sent out, to where and why. Sentences like that make me trust services more, even if I don't like what's being shared, I just appreciate the honesty.

Updated the philosophy docs with your feedback. Thanks again.

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