A social platform or forum focused on anonymity, free and open speech and a simplified UI.
What is BlacCat about?
It's not about reinventing the wheel, but it's my attempt at simplifying a few things that have gotten out of hand regarding social media. Namely:
- Surveillance: Social media as we know it today is basically spyware at this point. It exists first and foremost to get you to generate data for them. Whether that is acceptable or not is for you to decide, but I'm just here to say that it wasn't always like that and it doesn't have to be like that either. I'm not interested in your data. Too much data complicates everything. I'm interested in encouraging conversations.
- Toxicity/Algorithms: Not that long ago, social media corporations came to realize that the best way to get users to generate endless amounts of data for them is to get them permanently engaged, to the point that we are seriously talking about social media addiction as a mental health condition now. There are many ways to achieve that, but maybe the most powerful one of all is controversy. So they started changing how their apps work to fit this knowledge, implementing things like infinite scroll, gamification (likes, shares, notifications, etc.), and algorithms that decide for you what you need to see and what you don't, giving you only the illusion that you can shape your "feed" to your liking, but in reality, getting you deeper and deeper into an echo chamber and letting you peek out only to engage in controversy.
So what is the proposal?
Anonymity and a de-gamified UI/UX are the biggest parts of this. The way we see it, by eliminating the parts that are vulnerable to being gamified, you eliminate the incentive to gamify the platform. We make it anonymous because the possibility of having an online persona is one of the things that makes it most addictive as well. We cut out likes, upvotes, follows, notifications, etc., because those are the elements of gamification that get you constantly engaged. It's not just limiting functionality to disincentivize or punish the bad actors, but cutting from the root the very elements that make it vulnerable to these bad uses.
That is, at least, the idea. It's a bit of an experiment.
A word about the UI/UX
The main page is the [active] tab. All the active threads are directly accessible in the top carousel in order of latest activity. Threads that have remained inactive for 7 days go straight to the [archived] section and can be accessed there but are read-only.
When a user first enters the site, they have no username but are free to read all the content. Only when they attempt to comment on a thread or create a new thread, they answer a simple captcha and are assigned a random username and a color that corresponds to the font color in their username and the border color for their comments. But this username/color lasts only as long as the browser session, so it's not even a persistent "cookie" that stores or fetches any kind of user-data.
It's a throwaway, ephemeral identity that just helps us keep track of who we are talking to in a conversation, at least temporarirly, and not permanent enough to form an online persona.
Keyboard friendly
BlacCat is designed to be navigated efficiently with keyboard shortcuts:
Left/Right Arrow → Navigate active threads in the main page
N or n → Create a new thread
R or r → Respond to current thread
I or i → Go to or refresh main (index) page.
A or a → Go to or refresh archved page.
Escape → Cancel, close new thread modal or comment form
FAQs
A couple of clarifications might be in order:
1. Does this page harvest my data? No. We collect minimal data necessary for the site to function: your IP address is combined with your session ID, hashed, and stored temporarily in the database only to prevent spam and maintain your username/color during your browser session. This hash cannot be reversed to identify you. We don't use analytics, tracking cookies, or any third-party services. The code is open-source - you can check the GitHub repo to verify.
2. Did you use AI to create this site? Yes. This site was vibe-coded over about 1 month of scraping together the little free time I have here and there. Part of the purpose of creating it was precisely to see how far I could get in developing a complex project such as this from start to finish, by complementing my beginner-level programming knowledge with the help of AI. The other part is that I really thought it's an interesting concept worth at least putting out there as an experiment; and thanks to AI, I've been able to get it out of my head and share it with the world. So there.