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by SamBam11 hours ago |
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upvoteby ineptech8 hours ago|
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It also doubles as a way to verify that someone is a real person using their real identity, which is starting to become pretty important these days. If Alice and Bob are both on this platform, the confidence Alice can have in the proposition "the Bob account is really controlled by a guy named Bob who really knows some people I know, as opposed to being AI or an overseas scammer" would be roughly proportional to the strength of the friend network connecting them. That sounds useful.
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upvoteby dgellow4 hours ago|
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I’m not convinced that’s the case. A relatively small subset of bad actors can join the network, create new accounts on a second phone, tap (or find a way to fake that process via the API), then eventually use those accounts from bots.

It’s of course more friction, which in itself is good to avoid spam/bots, but over time all of that can very likely be automated

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upvoteby palijer2 hours ago|
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Bots don't matter if you aren't connected to accounts you haven't tapped phones with though.
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upvoteby buggymcbugfix4 hours ago|
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I think this point is crucial:

> [...] would be roughly proportional to the strength of the friend network connecting them.

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upvoteby lopis2 hours ago|
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There's a German gay social/dating app called Romeo that has a feature where you can show which people you know personally. There's no physical validation though, so it's easy to fake.
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upvoteby jdyer98 hours ago|
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My thoughts as well, I love this!

Easy to do, easy to implement but hard to bypass. Also it tells me something about the network that is not vying for a slice of the attention economy and isn't going to do everything it can to keep me on the site.

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upvoteby Bengalilol44 minutes ago|
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Why "hard to bypass" would be a sufficient thing? It depends on the technology used to connect the two phones. Bypassing this process can range from "easy" to "quite complicated", but it remains possible. Once the security is compromised, the entire network loses its core value since a single interaction is enough to establish a permanent connection.
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upvoteby darkwater7 hours ago|
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Don't underestimate the stubbornness of "get rich easy" people when it comes down to cheating etc. Even if it's not easy or cost effective, if this was going to be actually viral, they would tap real phones in click-farms to game the system. And do it once a year.
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upvoteby vintermann4 hours ago|
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It's true that there are people who pay a premium for thinking they got one up on you, and will waste $1000 of effort to get $100.

But it wouldn't actually work well. It doesn't even need physical invites, keeping track of the invite graph is a great way to kick scammers out. It works. It's been demonstrated to work well since at least 2004.

The reason social media sites don't do it is not that it doesn't work - it's that growth trumps those concerns. Making onboarding as easy as possible is more important than keeping scammers out.

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upvoteby schipperai3 hours ago|
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100%. The exclusivity of the network is the differentiator here.
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