Can we build a better Account Faucet for hive?
I've been prototyping an idea for an account faucet for @snapie. In my opinion, if I could tell a brand new Hivean to download just one app, that would be a win. But pulling something like that off is complicated to get right.
For one, account faucets on this blockchain are almost always abused. There are countless scammers who create hundreds of accounts every single day, either trying to take advantage of typos or, worse, impersonating people with a social media presence.
The reports are out there for anyone to see, and I’m not here to start fights. But let’s just say the projects that claim to be the best onboarding apps on Hive also end up being the most heavily abused. Is it intentional? Maybe not. But the damage is done all the same.
When I first jumped onto this chain, I remember the process not being too easy, but also not impossible. Of course, for some people the idea of handing over a phone number is out of the question. But simply giving out accounts should also be out of the question.
This is why projects like CheckinWith make the most sense to me. They allow for proof of humanity, and they also let the person doing the onboarding imprint something onto the new Hivean. The right attitude, the right words, the right guidance. All part of the pitch. All part of the conversation.
With all that said, and knowing this is a cat-and-mouse game, I still need to come up with something. How I can limit accounts to one per user is the part of the equation I don’t yet see—unless I request phone numbers too. Not perfect, but better than nothing, I suppose.
Part of this faucet, the one I’m prototyping right now, has to include the inability to make obviously scammy accounts. Names designed to trick people—like @bdhivestem, for example, which already exists, or countless other variations meant to catch someone half-asleep—should be blocked.
I’m thinking this list of rejected patterns and names could become a shared API endpoint for many account creation services across the chain. A database maintained by trusted Hiveans, witnesses, and of course Hive Watchers as well.
Is this perfect? Will it solve everything? Of course not. But to quote good ol’ Dan—who now only talks about the rapture—you can’t get rid of all abuse, and that shouldn’t be the goal. The goal is to tone it down. And that’s why I think my idea has some merit.
But hey, maybe I’ll just end up building something for @snapie and never get buy-in (though I’m not selling anything) from the other account creation services.
MenO
It is a mobile app - you could (if it is available in the SDK) look at the IMEI / serial number of the device? That way it isn't the personal information but merely the objective truth of the device used to register the account.
that is very clever... I'm going to talk to my bro about this.. very clever
Anything that you can come up with will be exploited by some people, so you have to make a conscious decision about what you want to prioritize. If it's ease of onboarding, yes, this will come with some drawbacks. Honestly, looking at the current "success" of Hive onboarding masses of new people, I wouldn't want to care too much about imposter accounts, at least as long as the resource cost to create those is manageable. I would try to come up with something that offers some security, go with it, and then solve one issue at a time.
When I tried Snapie, the onboarding was the weirdest experience in the user journey from a normie perspective
Please tell your friends and brother to leave me alone
I agree with you that toning abuse down rather than eliminating it is the right approach.
To me, the really essential thing is that genuine new users get the information and encouragement so they get "locked in" to becoming active users. We haven't got a great track record when it comes to user retention, particularly when people are used to the relatively frictionless legacy social media accounts, where all they have to do is exchange their entire online life's data and possibly their soul for immediate full access to the wall of advertising coming their way.
I keep thinking that Hive needs some kind of temporary HP boost mechanism which declines gradually over time as an account grows rather than being a sharp cut-off for new users. I think it could tied to activity of a kind that is hard to automate (if there is such a thing) to reduce abuse and get people into the habit of being active. Gamifying it, if you like.