sop
about
Sop is a group messaging app where the identity of the members of any particular group, collectively, may be known to the individual members, but during discourse those identities become anonymous. The group is allowed (or more accurately, required) to self-censor in order to moderate the ability of malignant actors to derail a conversation or send undesirable messages to the group. When a user sends a message to a group, one member is chosen randomly to "vet" the message and allow (or disallow) its publication. If enough time has passed with no response from the arbiter, other member(s) will be allowed to authorize the message's publication.
Anonymous group discussion over Sop is, ideally, resistant to abuse (and/or control) from extreme minorities, while also allowing minority subgroups to be heard (given that the messages are acceptable by the greater group or, failing that, that individuals in the minority subgroup become occasional arbiters of each others' messages). Since arbitration of sent messages is entirely anonymous, no one can be accused of over-moderation, and the group can assume that, as a whole and on average, published messages reflect the sympathies of multiple members.
why
In the most optimistic scenario, a group message thread in Sop could allow for free (and civil, given the arbitration requirements) discussion of ideas that participants might have been reluctant to discuss without anonymity. Messages sent are at least somewhat congruous with the purpose or bias of the community, however small, whereas messages inappropriate for the community are squashed unless a significant portion of the community sympathizes. In a pessimistic scenario, an echo chamber forms. Luckily, that's no different from the effect of traditional anonymous communication platforms, and the those still suffer from potential disproportionate influence of (and subsequent sway from) members with an ulterior motive or prerogative opposite the group philosophy.
There's a "Facebook problem" with identity-based communities, and a "Reddit problem" with anonymity-based communities. Identity enables accountability, prevents anti-social behavior, and mitigates malicious influence. However, identity also limits privacy (for obvious reasons), suppresses contrary expression due to social pressure, and fosters echo chambers because it mirrors the "real life" social phenomena (and confirmation bias reinforcement) of close-knit groups, and the members of these are rarely forced to venture outside their comfort zone. Anonymity, on the other hand, maximizes free expression and promotes the spread of new ideas and information, while eliminating the social penalty of sharing uncomfortable opinions or controversial material. Anonymous communities, however, are not necessarily better in comparison; anonymity allows anti-social behavior, is weak to "gaming" by savvy members, vulnerable to intentional [mis]direction by those with a hidden agenda, and susceptible to a hivemind effect that reinforces not only majority viewpoints but also gamed viewpoints, as soon as they enter the collective consciousness. As a result, an anonymous (or semi-anonymous) community almost always employs moderation by some centralized group(s) in order to mitigate those issues, if it is to thrive. That moderation is never purely democratic, however, and the groups responsible for moderation often either overstep their mandate or fall short of their duty.
The issues inherent to identity-centric mass communication are difficult to solve. Privacy is dissolved the moment identity is public, and an individual can never be certain that the organization central to the platform has his or her best interest in mind (or will, in the future). These problems come hand-in-hand with identity as a concept. The issues with anonymous communication, though, are not inherent to the concept of anonymity-based networks in general; practical anonymity doesn't require an augmentation of the concept of anonymity (as identity does), it requires an augmentation of the implementation of the anonymous community. That makes it a simpler (still difficult, but simpler) problem to solve. The augmented anonymous community must 1) mitigate anti-social behavior, 2) make it difficult to "game" the system, 3) inhibit floods of misdirection common to these communities, and 4) subvert the similarly common "hivemind"... while still encouraging free expression and allowing minority opinions to contribute to the health, flexibility, and evolution of the community. The simple ideas behind Sop are informed by these motivations, and Sop endeavors to be an experiment to achieve these goals.
It also just seems like fun! So there's that.
license
MIT
contributing
Sure, yeah, pull requests welcome.