It feels at times like the big hitters win—the Apples, the Googles of the world. But honestly, it’s simply the price one has to pay for access. I can live with that. For now, that is.

Requesting Moderation

Up until two days ago, I was breaking my head over how we could implement some practical moderation for Hive Snaps. I realize to some people right now, to hardcore Hivean purists (like myself), I’m being heretical. But we have to operate in reality.

There’s no way we’re getting approved by Apple without this feature. We have to do it if we want access to their users. I don’t know this to be a fact, but I suspect @good-karma knows a lot about this subject, and I hope at some point he and I can share a good talk. At any rate, I have to give the credit for this idea to my friend @mengao.

Moderation with No Backend

Before

After

The answer was so simple I had to laugh when @mengao shared it with me. What if @snapie’s downvotes were basically a tag of sorts to hide the Snap?

In other words: if @snapie downvotes someone for, let’s say, doxing or another big no-no, then our app simply does not display the post.

All we’d need to do is check whether a snap, reply, or post includes a downvote from @snapie, our App Mascot. Simple, and genius, because it requires no backend at all.

Reporting Snaps

This is the next piece of the puzzle, and I’m working on it right now: a simple button for people to report an illegal snap. Keep in mind, the idea is to hide illegal things—not things people just disagree with.

Users of the app will be able to report a snap for the typical reasons one sees on Web2:

• Inciting violence
• Impersonation / Scams
• Harmful Content
• Other (with explanation required)

It’s going to take the community’s effort to keep Snaps a good place to hang out, and I’ll be counting on people to report such things.

A simple bot will pick up these custom JSON operations, these reports, and feed a webhook into our Discord server for review.

Yes, It’s a Compromise

But again, it’s a toll we must pay if we want to be at the party where the people gather.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I’m okay with this. The idea of Hive Snaps is not to be the app people live and die on, but rather a gateway into our ecosystem. They’ll most definitely discover Peakd, since Snaps is a feature of theirs, and from there the sky’s the limit.

We just have to be a little sneaky, that’s all…

MenO