I love the idea, but it’s a real shame how people are using it. I wonder if AI can moderate it for offensiveness and spam prevention
Moderation moderation moderation . It’s a big problem
I have similar moderation concerns in my browser game/engine but I only ban offensive slurs not swears, but I give no visual affordance that the word is not allowed
The only surface where players see the input content is in a share card, and if they finish a game and get to the share card they will find the offensive word has been REDACTED lol
So it’s a long feedback loop just to find out your hijinks lead nowhere
…or you could just let people talk? People who engage with social features generally do so because they want to talk to other people. That carries some inherent risks.
Nah, drive those horrible people out of social spaces. I want to talk to other people without racist assholes bumbling around.
Being a racist asshole carries some inherent risks too, like people choosing not to let you enter their spaces.
Did you know that racist people are still people?
I just took a look at the page's own 'town square'. At the moment, it's largely full of people saying offensive things for the sake of it.
After having been a moderator for a number of communities over the years—BBCs in the 90s, niche forums during the 00s & 10s, Reddit boards in the 20s—I’ve come to believe that running shadow services where disruptive individuals can comingle may be the best way to handle this.
The advent of LLMs really opens the door to shunting off these “community members “ who’d rather contribute in misanthropic ways for the lulz than either leave or not contribute at all. They can take part in an interactive echo chamber that gives just as well as they can. You don’t even need a powerful model so the overall costs to the community are probably lower than the alternatives of trying to coexist with community-arsonists.
I spent years trying to find ways to bring people productively “into the fold” but eventually realized that it is futile in some cases because there’s zero value to the individual or the community to find a middle ground. They want to see things burn, and the community simply wants them out.
But why not kick them out? Why bother with a shadow site for them?
If they don't know they're being quarantined, there's no reason for them to find a way around their block. They'll eventually tucker themselves out and move on to whatever their internet equivalent of burning ants with a magnifying glass is.
The same reason people get shadowbanned. If they know they are banned they will attempt to work around it.
Maybe a really lightweight fast LLM could moderate messages in realtime. Not sure how pricey that would get though.
Within about 300ms I thought “moderation is going to be a problem”.
I contemplated implementing it on my site for a while but decided I didn’t want to add the JavaScript. Still find it a really cute concept.
Make a MapleStory-like one where each website can design their own room, and you can kill mobs and bosses and stuff. It would be neat if the characters and items persisted between.
Edit: a super smash brothers-like would be fun too. Maybe the page itself could be the platforms.
I made something similar last year: A p2p chat popup (that sits on bottom right of the page as a bubble) that allows all visitors to chat with each other. It had simple keyword based moderation in-built (can be easily bypassed though).
Was planning to add github oauth to get a known identity and persistent messaging so visitors can chat with each other across sites.
Instead of a webmaster adding script to their site, it was a browser extension.
The intent was two folds:
1. Get to know other people having similar interests,
2. Try something on the lines of a decentralized chat/messaging system.
This was actually a lot of fun. Not as much trolling as I anticipated. Surprising amount of normal chit chat.
There was a thing from the 90s kind of like this called Third Voice. It was a cool idea, but I remember there being a lot of backlash from brands.
Love the idea. Could use some filters and stale (sleeping) clients could get removed quicker.
Also, it seemed to be disconnecting quite often, maybe a hug of death thing.
I've always wondered if we could find a way to add content website's content without it turning into a shitshow. MLS listings / Zillow is an interesting use-case. A realtor might describe something as "sun-filled" but omit that the home is next to a 24/7 dump truck repair warehouse.
rather interesting, except the spamming of the inappropriate messages.
Neat idea! It's simple but very effective - and I really enjoy the detail of the benches and the tree. Very nice.
I wouldn't add it to any of my sites due to the unmoderated nature of it - seeing some fairly unsavory things in your demo - but that's just a little tweak, I'm sure!
openai has a free moderation endpoint. no reason to not use it.
edit: downvoters either know something I don't about its unsuitability, or have outdated info on it and think it's against terms to use it for reasons unrelated to GPT. it's not against terms.
If your website attracts such elements perhaps there's a reason?
The demo is attracting the HN crowd and it’s getting… well, let’s just say this crowd is about as good as it gets online.
I love the idea! The next step is to add role play games in town squares.
I was thinking the same thing, or even just little minigames and Easter eggs for people to find.
I've been playing with presence too...! I def am thinking about using it more for real-time motion communication (which is largely missing from web) rather than text (which is very overrepresented, and where most moderation comes in).
I was toying with the idea of making a little crowd representation sticky at the bottom, like watching a screen together :)
Regardless, I love concepts like this. Thanks!
this is a very clever concept. I'll keep it in mind for the future - when my app site has persistent amount of visitors. Are there some rules/settings for stop words to prevent some types of abuse? Or is it planned?
This is great! Thank you for sharing it. Fun to use and already customizable.
Really cool but should limit # of people shown when there are too many. Currently it gets really laggy
> NOTE: This project has been mostly vibe-coded
I deeply appreciate the honesty here. I’ll pass based on the vibecodedness of it but perhaps it won’t be a dealbreaker for others.
Is it the philosophical reason you refuse to engage or is it because you don’t trust the security of this project?
Easy come, easy go. I find most vibe coded projects are abandonware.
Also, in this context, security.
interesting. i'm appearing as a grey guy not the orange guy like your blog says
Maybe adding rooms will be a good move
This is amazing! Congratulations on the launch. Repository link somewhere?
Oh what the heck? That's super cool! Awesome idea. Possible future enhancement: some basic day/night (or even weather?) design elements that match the timezone of the person whose site it is? Still, doesn't even need it, it's really cool as-is!
I could see it being used as some avenue for saying toxic stuff, so I'm suddenly feeling like the only allowed actions should be ones that can never be harmful (like text interactions are just choosing from a pre-set list)..
Nintendo does this on Mario Kart, just allowing text from a pre-set list. It's very limited, but works.
I enjoyed the design.
haha nice project! I stayed there for a couple of minutes and had such a good time!
Not really a square if it's 1D - everyone ends up on top of each other.
Not really a highway if it's a series of tubes.
would make more sense with webrtc.
First saw this on lobste.rs . Great idea, perhaps allow for a little customisation? I'd like minimal animation, just a counter of present people and a green dot that vibrates when someone is typing. Clicking either opens a chat box with last 20 minutes.
I like the idea of this like a town square for websites. Nice job
I love the idea, but it’s a real shame how people are using it. I wonder if AI can moderate it for offensiveness and spam prevention
Moderation moderation moderation . It’s a big problem
I have similar moderation concerns in my browser game/engine but I only ban offensive slurs not swears, but I give no visual affordance that the word is not allowed
The only surface where players see the input content is in a share card, and if they finish a game and get to the share card they will find the offensive word has been REDACTED lol
So it’s a long feedback loop just to find out your hijinks lead nowhere
…or you could just let people talk? People who engage with social features generally do so because they want to talk to other people. That carries some inherent risks.
Nah, drive those horrible people out of social spaces. I want to talk to other people without racist assholes bumbling around.
Being a racist asshole carries some inherent risks too, like people choosing not to let you enter their spaces.
Did you know that racist people are still people?
I just took a look at the page's own 'town square'. At the moment, it's largely full of people saying offensive things for the sake of it.
After having been a moderator for a number of communities over the years—BBCs in the 90s, niche forums during the 00s & 10s, Reddit boards in the 20s—I’ve come to believe that running shadow services where disruptive individuals can comingle may be the best way to handle this.
The advent of LLMs really opens the door to shunting off these “community members “ who’d rather contribute in misanthropic ways for the lulz than either leave or not contribute at all. They can take part in an interactive echo chamber that gives just as well as they can. You don’t even need a powerful model so the overall costs to the community are probably lower than the alternatives of trying to coexist with community-arsonists.
I spent years trying to find ways to bring people productively “into the fold” but eventually realized that it is futile in some cases because there’s zero value to the individual or the community to find a middle ground. They want to see things burn, and the community simply wants them out.
But why not kick them out? Why bother with a shadow site for them?
If they don't know they're being quarantined, there's no reason for them to find a way around their block. They'll eventually tucker themselves out and move on to whatever their internet equivalent of burning ants with a magnifying glass is.
The same reason people get shadowbanned. If they know they are banned they will attempt to work around it.
Maybe a really lightweight fast LLM could moderate messages in realtime. Not sure how pricey that would get though.
Within about 300ms I thought “moderation is going to be a problem”.
Yeah, I had exactly the same thought.
So it’s a twitter plugin?
Matt Webb made a version of this (and wrote about it) a while back—Cursor Party: https://interconnected.org/home/2024/09/05/cursor-party
I contemplated implementing it on my site for a while but decided I didn’t want to add the JavaScript. Still find it a really cute concept.
Make a MapleStory-like one where each website can design their own room, and you can kill mobs and bosses and stuff. It would be neat if the characters and items persisted between.
Edit: a super smash brothers-like would be fun too. Maybe the page itself could be the platforms.
I made something similar last year: A p2p chat popup (that sits on bottom right of the page as a bubble) that allows all visitors to chat with each other. It had simple keyword based moderation in-built (can be easily bypassed though).
Was planning to add github oauth to get a known identity and persistent messaging so visitors can chat with each other across sites.
Instead of a webmaster adding script to their site, it was a browser extension.
The intent was two folds:
1. Get to know other people having similar interests,
2. Try something on the lines of a decentralized chat/messaging system.
This was actually a lot of fun. Not as much trolling as I anticipated. Surprising amount of normal chit chat.
There was a thing from the 90s kind of like this called Third Voice. It was a cool idea, but I remember there being a lot of backlash from brands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Voice
Love the idea. Could use some filters and stale (sleeping) clients could get removed quicker.
Also, it seemed to be disconnecting quite often, maybe a hug of death thing.
I've always wondered if we could find a way to add content website's content without it turning into a shitshow. MLS listings / Zillow is an interesting use-case. A realtor might describe something as "sun-filled" but omit that the home is next to a 24/7 dump truck repair warehouse.
rather interesting, except the spamming of the inappropriate messages.
Neat idea! It's simple but very effective - and I really enjoy the detail of the benches and the tree. Very nice.
I wouldn't add it to any of my sites due to the unmoderated nature of it - seeing some fairly unsavory things in your demo - but that's just a little tweak, I'm sure!
openai has a free moderation endpoint. no reason to not use it.
edit: downvoters either know something I don't about its unsuitability, or have outdated info on it and think it's against terms to use it for reasons unrelated to GPT. it's not against terms.
If your website attracts such elements perhaps there's a reason?
The demo is attracting the HN crowd and it’s getting… well, let’s just say this crowd is about as good as it gets online.
I love the idea! The next step is to add role play games in town squares.
I was thinking the same thing, or even just little minigames and Easter eggs for people to find.
I've been playing with presence too...! I def am thinking about using it more for real-time motion communication (which is largely missing from web) rather than text (which is very overrepresented, and where most moderation comes in).
I was toying with the idea of making a little crowd representation sticky at the bottom, like watching a screen together :)
Regardless, I love concepts like this. Thanks!
this is a very clever concept. I'll keep it in mind for the future - when my app site has persistent amount of visitors. Are there some rules/settings for stop words to prevent some types of abuse? Or is it planned?
This is great! Thank you for sharing it. Fun to use and already customizable.
Really cool but should limit # of people shown when there are too many. Currently it gets really laggy
> NOTE: This project has been mostly vibe-coded
I deeply appreciate the honesty here. I’ll pass based on the vibecodedness of it but perhaps it won’t be a dealbreaker for others.
Is it the philosophical reason you refuse to engage or is it because you don’t trust the security of this project?
Easy come, easy go. I find most vibe coded projects are abandonware.
Also, in this context, security.
interesting. i'm appearing as a grey guy not the orange guy like your blog says
Maybe adding rooms will be a good move
This is amazing! Congratulations on the launch. Repository link somewhere?
In the footer. https://github.com/cauenapier/TownSquare
Oh what the heck? That's super cool! Awesome idea. Possible future enhancement: some basic day/night (or even weather?) design elements that match the timezone of the person whose site it is? Still, doesn't even need it, it's really cool as-is!
I could see it being used as some avenue for saying toxic stuff, so I'm suddenly feeling like the only allowed actions should be ones that can never be harmful (like text interactions are just choosing from a pre-set list)..
Nintendo does this on Mario Kart, just allowing text from a pre-set list. It's very limited, but works.
I enjoyed the design.
haha nice project! I stayed there for a couple of minutes and had such a good time!
Not really a square if it's 1D - everyone ends up on top of each other.
Not really a highway if it's a series of tubes.
would make more sense with webrtc.
First saw this on lobste.rs . Great idea, perhaps allow for a little customisation? I'd like minimal animation, just a counter of present people and a green dot that vibrates when someone is typing. Clicking either opens a chat box with last 20 minutes.
I like the idea of this like a town square for websites. Nice job