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Well, it could go either way.
One of the reasons therapists exist is they're not blank voids like the internet.
They can respond in human ways, be real and realistic. Help put the confession into context of a person's life.
Without that, it's a role of the dice. Some people will come away feeling lighter.
Some will come away with a sensation of having talked themselves into believing they're a piece of ****.
I guess that's why AITA is such a popular format.
This idea reminds me of https://postsecret.com/ . I don't know if it's helpful, but it's interesting.
PostSecret is interesting because it's anonymous but still curated.
What I'm experimenting with is even simpler.
No profiles. No identity. Just very short one-line confessions people were never supposed to say out loud.
More like raw thoughts than stories.
How about curation though? Having been on the internet for some decades, I can see something like this uncurated go one of two ways - wholesome as fuck or completely unhinged.
That’s the interesting part.
If people know their name and profile are attached, they filter themselves.
When identity disappears, you sometimes get chaos, but you also get honesty people never show anywhere else.
The question is whether the honesty outweighs the chaos.
Sadly people have getting more and more wild with their actual name and image attached over the last few years, but I like the initiative and hope that a wholesome spirit sets in quickly to make it a light on the otherwise muddy internet.
What about slop machine infestation prevention? Or is that something to work with further down the line?
The Catholics have had that for thousands of years. So maybe there is something to it.
That’s actually a really good point.
Confession probably worked for centuries because people needed a place to say things they couldn’t say anywhere else.
Backroom is basically trying to recreate that idea, just anonymously and without religion.
The church invented that to control the secrets in any congregation. So yeah, bad thing. Backroom sounds like a fun idea. How would you ensure peoples anonymity and privacy? How would you fund this?
Good question.
The idea is basically to remove identity completely. No accounts required to read. Posting is session based and nothing links back to a person. Even chats auto-delete after 24h.
The goal is that the secret is the only thing that exists. Not the person behind it.
Funding later would probably come from hosts running rooms people pay a small amount to enter. But right now it’s just an experiment to see if people actually want a place like this.
What would stop it from becoming 4chan?
Fair concern.
4chan is anonymous but completely unstructured.
Backroom is built around hosts running rooms with their own rules. If a room becomes toxic, people simply stop entering it.
So moderation happens at the room level, not through identity.
If a room becomes toxic, people simply stop entering it.
How would this have stopped 4chan? People still go to those toxic message boards.
True. Some people will always seek those spaces.
The idea isn't to eliminate that behavior.
It's more about creating rooms where the default incentive is sharing something personal rather than provoking reactions.
There are so many ways for this to become incredibly toxic and unhelpful, my first thought is it could become a support group for all types criminals/abusers to share tips and tricks anonymously.
At least the Catholics and therapists have someone there trying to steer things in a helpful direction. Like maybe you could tweak this idea to anonymous therapy rather than anonymous confession, and then people could view people going through therapy online and maybe find helpful tips for their own lives.
That’s a fair concern.
The intention isn’t to create a space for advice or coordination. Posts are limited to very short one-line confessions and rooms can set strict rules about what’s allowed.
More like people admitting something they’ve never said out loud than discussing how to do things.
There is a conflict still. First, you want unfiltered confession meaning no moderation. But then you don't want it to become a safe space for criminals, which would require moderating. If you don't moderate the content, it'll quickly take on a life of its own and that won't be the helpful thing you're imagining.
That’s true to some extent.
The idea isn’t zero moderation, it’s shifting it away from identity. Rooms can set rules and remove posts, but the system itself doesn’t track who people are.
So the control happens at the room level rather than through accounts or personal identity.
Not to shit on your idea, but why would anyone want to read such things in the first place? I get the need to get something off your chest, but I don't get why someone would be interested in hearing it?
That’s actually the most interesting part.
People are curious about what others really think but never say out loud. Confessions, secrets, uncomfortable truths.
It’s the same reason anonymous confession pages and posts tend to spread so easily.
Yeah and the catholics are the most moral and good people around.
Who the fuck sees Catholicism as a proof of success?
To be fair, their version also came with forgiveness and absolution. So I'm sure plenty of pedos confessed their sins only to be told, "say a few hail Mary's, and try not to do it again. But as far as god is concerned, it's like it never happened." So they could convince themselves they did nothing wrong.
I don't know why you're using the past tense, the church is still defending them.
Just a warning on running a service like this - any website that allows arbitrary text entry from anonymous users will be found and flooded by bots very quickly.
The most innocent, least damaging version of what happens is adbots posting links to shoddy websites selling "essential oils" and other homeopathy nonsense.
More obscure but more malicious, text posts are used to control botnets for cybercrime. Basically a human running the botnet will post a string of letters and numbers to a website which the bots have been programmed to look for instructions. Websites that allow anonymous text entry are convenient for this because if the criminal activity is investigated, it's hard to trace the instructions from the controller back to a real person.
Just be aware that people will abuse your service for purposes you did not intend. You'll probably need both automated tooling for identifying and blocking bot traffic, as well as human moderation.
That's a really good point.
Any anonymous input system will attract bots sooner or later.
The experiment is partly about seeing how much structure (rooms, hosts, limited formats) changes that dynamic compared to open anonymous boards.
Well, there's actually been research into it.
Since that shit is dry as hell, and there's available articles about it, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/202202/why-it-feels-so-good-confess
This one gives a nice overview.
So, I'd say it's pretty realistic to say that "confession" has mental health benefits.
That being said, true anonymity is going to be vital if you're going to try to build something online. Not just for the people that might want to use it, but for you too. You really don't want the legal issues if someone were to confess on your service and it became part of trial evidence. You may be thinking it's not a big deal, that it'll never happen, but it does happen already with social media.
The less you'll be able to provide, the less hassle you'll have. So keep that in mind. Reddit, Facebook, VPNs, they all deal with legal requests regularly, but they have legal departments to handle those to keep a barrier between the people running things and the consequences of users' actions/words.
Me? No fucking way I'd even confess to jaywalking online, period. And I have never done that (that's actually true, I've never been in a situation where it was useful. Small towns and infrequent visits to cities ftw?). I'd also advise anyone else to never do so.
Also, if you're a priest/minister and your religion has a confessional seal, you have pretty robust legal protection about not having to break it, in many places. Therapists also have a degree of confidentiality that they're legally required to maintain. Your online service has neither. So you'll also have responsibilities above and beyond what therapists or ministers have. Well, you may, since local laws vary, and I've never heard of a lot of legal precedent around mandatory reporting for online services. But even if you aren't currently required to report a range of things, not doing so might open you up to lawsuits and/or eager prosecutors looking to set a precedent.
I guess what it comes down to is: yeah, it could help people. But better you than me
Those are really good points.
The legal side is something I’ve been thinking about as well. The idea is to store as little as possible and avoid accounts entirely.
But you’re right that anonymity online always has limits.
I have had similar thoughts. I certainly have some deep regrets that I never discuss. I wouldn't feel comfortable putting them online, though.
PostSecret and /r/confession are/were like this.
I absolutely wouldn’t post anything online I wouldn’t feel comfortable having read out in front of a judge.
That hesitation is exactly the interesting part.
Most people have something they would never say publicly. The question is whether anonymity actually changes that.
Would it actually be healthier if people had a place to post these thoughts completely anonymously?
No identity. No profile. Just the confession.
I've been thinking about this too, so much, ever since I joined lemmy!!
But I’m honestly curious if people would actually use something like that or if most secrets are better left unsaid.
I would 100% use the shit out of this. Make it more than 1 line, though.
As for your main question, i think it is good. It's a tradition, really, which suggests it has always been of some benefit to people. Maybe confessing to friends or a psychotherapist (or even a catholic priest) is better because of the advice aspect, the intimacy and the courage it takes.
TL;DR heavy thoughts are best shared with others.
Some questions about backroom (if you have time or an answer to them):
I'd expect any online thing to be traced back to the person if it was juicy or otherwise usable as kompromat. There was just a news item about using LLM analysis to de-anonymize people, fwiw.
That's a fair concern.
Absolute anonymity probably doesn't exist anywhere online.
The idea is more about minimizing identity: no profiles, no history, and posts not tied to accounts. If something leaks, it can't expose a whole identity because there isn't one attached.
I think that it is probably good. On the other hand, I don't think that you necessarily need to build something specifically for that purpose because the internet was basically built from the ground up with anonymity in mind. Some of the internet has moved away from that, but there's still plenty of capability for people to be anonymous if they want to be.
That's true in theory.
But most anonymous spaces today are still built around profiles, threads, or reputation.
What I'm curious about is whether people behave differently when the post is literally the only thing that exists. No profile. No history. Just the confession itself.
It is democratic. You have a right to all information, the right to error, the right to skepticism, and the right to protest in all nonviolent forms aka the right to offend others.
In this regime of rights, the right to skepticism is the fundamental. You have a right to think for yourself. Authoritarianism is the opposite. Trust is its fulcrum and individual thought, belief, and access to information are not rights of individuals.
You cannot have democracy and citizens without outlets of free expression of all types. There is no way to know if some group is in collusion or spreading misinformation for various purposes. Having the right to anonymously express and check concerns in the public commons is absolutely critical to democracy. Any attempt to remove it is an attack on skepticism, the fundamental cornerstone of democracy that if removed causes total collapse.