Do you guys know about the Post Secret? It’s an art project that started a few years ago, that collected anonymously-written post cards, where the author shared a previously unknown secret. Creator, Frank Warren, anthologized some of the cards in books and started a blog for people to share even more anonymous secrets. Something about sharing or reading anonymous secrets is really addicting. Next came the app, which went over like gangbusters. Submit your secrets via smartphone. Fantastic!
Unfortunately the app turned out to be too much for the PostSecret community to handle. Secrets were flooding in at such a high rate, that quality control fell behind, which led to anonymous trolls posting spam. From the PostSecret blog: “Like the PostSecret Blog, the App was designed so each secret was absolutely anonymous. Unfortunately, that absolute anonymity made it very challenging to permanently remove determined users with malicious intent.” And it wasn’t just spam that Warren and his team were trying to weed out. The FBI was called in to investigate threats made to Warren, his family, and other users.
Two words to the trolls: play nice.
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