Serious question.
Most people carry things they never tell anyone.
Not illegal things. Just thoughts that would damage relationships or reputations if they were said out loud.
Regret about past decisions. Things people hide from partners. Thoughts about friends or family they would never admit publicly.
Therapists exist for a reason, but most people never go to one.
So I was wondering something.
Would it actually be healthier if people had a place to post these thoughts completely anonymously?
No identity. No profile. Just the confession.
I’m building a small experiment called Backroom around this idea where people can post one-line anonymous secrets.
But I’m honestly curious if people would actually use something like that or if most secrets are better left unsaid.
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.
https://simplex.chat/
Set up Tor and make a chat confession group and you’re pretty much there
Simplex is interesting.
The difference here would be that it’s not private messaging. The idea is short public confessions that appear in rooms and disappear again after a few days.
More like anonymous graffiti than a chat group.
If it’s public it doesn’t disappear. People will make copies.
You could have a home site or group and multiple sub groups though.
True. Anything public can be copied.
The idea isn’t perfect secrecy. It’s more about removing identity and permanence so people feel safer saying something once and letting it fade.
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.
Moderation kinda depends on identity, as the trolls who want every room to be toxic will enter every room and make sure it’s toxic if there’s no rudimentary identification.
That’s a fair point.
The idea isn’t that anonymity magically solves trolling. It’s more that rooms create friction. If a host bans someone or locks access, that person doesn’t automatically get the same reach everywhere else.
In big anonymous feeds the trolls and normal users share the exact same space. Rooms try to break that dynamic a bit.
It probably won’t eliminate toxicity, but the hope is it localizes it.
If it’s using an expiring session-based anonymous “account” for interactions, how would you ban someone? Or allow rooms to be restricted, for that matter?
Like I like the idea, I just don’t understand how both things can be true.
Good question.
The sessions are temporary but not instantly disposable. A host can still block a session from a room, and rooms can require approval to enter.
So the anonymity is mostly between users. Hosts still have basic control over who can participate in their space.
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.
So no logging IP addresses of people posting or anything like that?
IP addresses are only handled at the infrastructure level for basic abuse protection.
They are not connected to posts or identities and nothing is stored that could link a confession back to a person.
The whole design tries to separate the secret from the individual as much as possible.
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.