GabeK0

Ah, sorry to hear. My guess would be that it's Google Recaptcha (something that I was forced to add to fend off spammers and very happy to remove if there's a better solution).

Another option is the iOS app version of the site (if you have an iOS device), we put up a version on TestFlight which is mostly feature parallel with the web version: https://testflight.apple.com/join/aCM3SWNY

Great question, I could speak at quite some length about this.

My thinking has been that anonymity + knowing that your messages will disappear in a few seconds creates the lowest pressure possible environment to say something that you might not normally want to talk about (IE, venting about something that bugged you, for example.)

/b/ is indeed anonymous, but on the other hand, you know your post is going to stay there for a while. People can read it and respond to it for some time after it's been posted. On VentScape, you know that after a few seconds it will disappear, thereby being lower pressure.

You bring up a good point, that you aren't talking to anyone directly here, which is true I think. But I also believe, personally, that a lot of the benefit of "venting" is attained even just by getting the words to come out of your mouth. Your vent doesn't necessarily need to be critically discussed with another person to benefit.

Is VentScape the world's greatest venting platform? I do not think so. But I do think it allows for a certain kind of pressure free communication that's hard to come by elsewhere, whether that be friendly banter, random chatting, or yes, venting.

I could write a lot more about this if you (or anyone else) is curious, but those are some initial thoughts (without being too wordy, hopefully.)

Oh goodness have I experienced spammers.

The first version that I made ~6 months ago had basically zero protection against spammers/trolls/etc, and it's been a non-stop arms race since then. I could rant for long hours about the numerous types of attacks and what I've had to do to prevent them.

I like the random code idea. But you'd have to ask more than once, otherwise spammers could go through the code once and then turn on their script. So it again becomes a tradeoff of how much to worsen the experience for normal users

Awesome, so glad you're enjoying it! If you have any issues with site, suggestions or just wanna chat about ventscape, my email is open to you or anyone else reading this: gabe@ventscape.life

This is already done! But then the spammers would just slow their spam bots down under or near the rate limit, and it would get very annoying seeing random max length messages appear over and over again every few seconds. You could make the rate limit even more restrictive, but then you ruin the experience for normal users. It's a tough problem

Try hard refreshing and it should connect. I sometimes encounter this if there's a weird cache issue. If that doesn't work, let me know

Yup, I've seen that first hand in the early days of the site, which is why a huge proportion of my work on this has gone into moderation :)

Hmmm, slowness might be caused by minimizing / tabbing out and a bunch of messages building up. I can definitely fix this though. If it gets slow during normal usage, that's another story that I'll have to look into.

And regarding the other comment, I'm guessing you're referring to Google Recaptcha. Yeah, I see what you mean. Of course, I would prefer to not have that in there either but was forced to add it in to curtail people spamming the site with scripts / bots. If you have another solution to prevent that, I'm all ears!

Yes good point. There is some per-user rate limiting. But there can be enough people on simultaneously that the whole screen still gets filled up. Our idea is to eventually split people into separate "rooms" automatically if too many people get on, or something like that

Great thinking. I also want to make it location based eventually, but it's hard enough to get enough people on simultaneously for it to be interesting so I think this could only be done if we somehow get a huge user base.

AR I haven't thought of yet but that sounds really cool too

VentScape is a large, anonymous, chat room where all messages fade away and disappear after a few seconds, an idea born out of my deepest loneliness during the height of the pandemic.

The anonymity, ephemerality, and other features work together to provide the quickest, easiest way to have fun conversations online — the kind of social interaction I personally wished I had more of throughout the many lonely months of 2020.

Originally imagined as a minimalistic space to vent anonymously and see others doing the same in real-time (something I personally wanted, believed had psychological benefits, and was disappointed didn't already exist), after the site got posted on HN and Reddit I slowly realized that the real magic was oftentimes in the fun, spontaneous conversations people would have on it. I then began rehashing the idea and working on a new and refined version in React Native with a friend.

This new React Native version of VentScape got to a good spot so I posted it to HN a few weeks ago. It didn't receive much attention, I think in large part due to it being a TestFlight download link instead of just an immediately useable web app. I worked on refurbishing the web app after this experience, (essentially realizing that it's far easier to use a web app than downloading a TestFlight app) which is what I'm here today to Show HN.

I'd love to hear any feedback you may have on the site, or to discuss anything about the engineering or the idea itself (whether that be its philosophy, psychology, or anything else). Thank you so much, and cheers.

Links:

First HN Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25923301

Reddit r/InternetIsBeautiful Thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/l5h3zz...

Second HN Thread w/ TestFlight link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27541185

VentScape is a large, anonymous, chat room where all messages fade away and disappear after a few seconds, an idea born out of my deepest loneliness during the height of the pandemic.

The anonymity, ephemerality, and other features work together to provide the quickest, easiest way to have fun conversations online — the kind of social interaction I personally wished I had more of throughout the many lonely months of 2020.

Originally imagined as a minimalistic space to vent anonymously and see others doing the same in real-time (something I personally wanted, believed had psychological benefits, and was disappointed didn't already exist), after the site got posted on HN and Reddit (links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25923301 and https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/l5h3zz...) I slowly realized that the real magic was oftentimes in the fun, spontaneous conversations people would have on it. I then began rehashing the idea and working on a new and refined version in React Native with a friend.

This new React Native version of VentScape is now in a good spot and is ready to beta test on iOS with TestFlight, which is what I'm here today to Show HN. I'd love to hear any feedback you may have on the app, or to discuss anything about the engineering or the idea itself (whether that be its philosophy, psychology, or anything else). Thank you so much, and cheers.