Show HN: Throw – The new space for asking and answering questions anonymously (throwapp.com)
For the past year we’ve been working on this disruptive new thing. It’s about people, community, communication and truth.
Throw is the new space for asking and answering questions anonymously. We believe that in today’s world (both online and offline) content in communication exchanges is strongly influenced by the personas, profiles and façades people maintain/upkeep/safeguard socially, ideologically and on relationships.
From the way people post on Instagram the life they want others to believe they have, or the way people behave on thanksgiving with family, or at work, or with friends; on every social setting and interaction to some degree acting and behaving according to that setting and the people they interact with. These dynamics influence the content itself, as people don’t just respond to a question like computers do. What ends up happening is that the responder comes up with the answer by blending the possibly objective answer with feelings, setting, desires, commitments, ideologies, fears, insecurities, etc (social pressure or social agenda).
Something is missing between social media and the traditional Q&A…
Throw addresses this by creating a space free from this social agenda. Thus focusing strictly on the content exchanged and providing a safe, comfortable and unbiased space where people can ask and answer anything freely with no bias, fears or strings attached.
Not only may Throw be used for personal and private questions and answers. But the power of crowdsourcing allows for a great variety of use cases like market research, validation of content and ideas, trivia, and much more. Serious matters and also just for fun…
It’s a query marketplace which means that “throwers” (people who ask questions) pay a fee proportional to the answers they need and in turn “catchers” (who catch them and respond) get compensated. This way we guarantee every user gets as many responses as he/she needs.
As for dealing with anonymity, we have built a sophisticated moderation protocol to neutralize and quickly ban people that contribute negatively as it is a priority people feel safe and comfortable in this community.
We have worked very hard to create a delightful product and are currently very close to rolling out our app to the market.
If this is something that may be of your interest or you’d like to be one of the first to test it out, you may keep an eye for our launch and other news by subscribing to our waitlist. https://www.throwapp.com
Also, if you have questions there is additional information in the FAQs section on our web page that could be of help.
If you still haven't looked at our explainer video I encourage you to see it as it's quite fun and describes pretty well what we are doing. https://youtu.be/3f9RcVVpkNA
Finally, we really appreciate any feedback we can get (of any kind). So if there's anything you like, don't like, or any other thought about Throw, we'd love to hear about it! You may post a comment below or through the contact section on the web page.
Be curious and dare to know!
Thank you!
48 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 94.3 ms ] threadA potential problem I see with simple question/answer systems like this is, are questions about truth. Paying to get more answers only forms a majority opinion, not truth. Collaboratively working on an argument graph could be useful in this situation.
Did you do anything to prevent sybil attacks in your voting system?
Btw, Show HN is meant for projects you can already try, not just for waiting lists.
I still signed up and want to see how it works :)
You do have a point about majority of opinion not necessarily being the truth.
The way we see this is, when someone looks for feedback or needs to make a decision, having a diverse pool of unbiased information increases the chances of having a better understanding of the truth. Thus potentially making a petter decision.
As for Sybil attacks, it will be virtually impossible to influence and target a particular question as each user is not open to choose which question to match. Throw does the thrower/catchers matching using a dynamic algorithm with many variables to determine the best matches. So we are expecting certain users to try to use several accounts to try to go around the system and we’re prepared for that.
I really appreciate your candid feedback and am really hoping you love it once it’s out there!
To your first question, yes! The compensation paid is a dynamic fee determined by the score (karma of a kind) a user has.
There was a previous question on this page asking what determines quality. And fundamentally it is the fulfillment/satisfaction of the needs of the person who asked.
So people who give better answers on a consistent basis will earn more than people who don’t. This creates a virtuous cycle.
As for answers that are either trash or offensive, there is an extremely-viusal “report” button on every answer that if hit immediately triggers an investigation. If found true, you’ll get refunded for that answer and the offender will be drastically punished if not banned as there is minimal tolerance for this.
Finally, some examples are: -Sourcing ideas -Depression, anxiety, and loneliness advise -Love life & relationship advise -Embarrassing situations advise -Parenting advise -Feedback on content before posting on social media (content creators or public figures for example…) -Product / service feedback Market research -Difficult life situation advise -Important decisions advise -Curious questions -Random questions -Sourcing memes or jokes -Trivia
And honestly many more, it’s up to peoples creativity as the platform provides much flexibility.
Hope this helps and thank you so much for asking!
“Is the response to this question offensive?”
(Yes it is offensive / no it is not offensive)
So, in short, a crowdsourced jury!
Do you mean that the thrower gets to decide which answers are "quality" and deserve a payout?
> If found true, you’ll get refunded for that answer
This seems to imply that throwers will be automatically charged for any catchers before they've decided it's useful, which sounds like a huge problem.
The general rule is that answers that are subject to refund are answers that fall into 2 categories 1) it’s gibberish/trash/unrelated content (for example someone that repeatedly copy-pastes the same paragraph with no relation to the question hoping to earn money), and 2) offensive content (anywhere from trolling, racism, misogyny, etc).
As for your second claim, yes, you pay regardless if you find it useful (unless of course it’s any of the two categories I previously mentioned).
And the reason for this is because getting a large pool of diverse and unbiased data puts you on a better informed position and may open your eyes to angles you wouldn’t have considered otherwise. Regardless if you dislike them or disagree with them.
You’re not always going to hear what you want to hear…
If that we’re to happen it would be partly true that only product or market people would be interested and it would become a noche platform say “Perksy” which does precisely what you describe.
We do believe it is very unlikely for this to happen as we purposely decided not to launch in a niche or with an audience of this sort.
So yes, there will likely be some marketers that use this for market research but it will be very unlikely they drive the content in the community.
We really appreciate the feedback!
"The 10 year old test" is an imaginary test where I inhabit the mind of a 10 year old for a little bit trying to find inappropriate or gross jokes to make about the name. In your case "Throw App" and "Throw Up" are extremely similar. Even more so if you have certain non-native accents.
I think the name 'Throw' is totally fine, I'd just avoid using it next to 'app' if I were you.
You’re right and we probably will update the domain down the road.
This is probably the biggest challenge we faced we decided to create Throw.
We have addressed the problem face on and believe we have developed a robust solution to outrun this kind of behaviors.
Our moderation (filtering out and reward) algorithm very quickly promotes or demotes users based on the quality of their content.
And it is the community itself (with supervision of our team) that drive the tone.
Also thanks for the wishes!
The platform is prepared positive and negative tags that strongly influence each user’s score (sort of like karma).
So what we value mostly is the effort taken to satisfy and meet the query’s needs.
As for trash and offensive content you’d simply hit the report button, an investigation will immediately take course, you’ll be reimbursed that answer and the offender drastically punished if not permanently banned as there is minimal tolerance for this.
In the end, nor email nor any other attribute that ties to your identity will be shown or used within the platform.
It’s fair to be skeptical.
Maybe we’ll change your opinion when you see it in action.
Thanks for commenting still.
The ones about how much each answer pays and the minimum threshold, the answers essentially say "you get paid an amount per answer" and "you can pay out above a threshold" without actually saying what the numbers are. It's a little recursive :P
I guess my main question is: Ballpark figures of course, not holding you to a quote, how much per answer? We talking pennies or dollars?
Threshold then comes in to play as (for example) if it's pennies per answer and the payout threshold is $100 it will probably not pay out for anyone but those that figure out how to game the system or get reeeally involved and treat it as a job ala Mechanical Turk
I'm also getting a vague reminder of Aardvark[1] (RIP, cheers Google) if it'd help to see how something similar worked :)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark_(search_engine)
I was worried Google would squash my finances forever with a patent lawsuit haha
So the way this was designed, is so that the unit (answer) cost is fairly cheap (below the dollar), so that volume is incentivized.
In turn, the payout amount which is a fraction of that per unit cost was calculated to be an attractive enough figure. Such that if you don’t do this ala Mechanical Turk you get some decent extra cash out of it and if you do get very involved you can even make a salary out of it.
However, there is a dynamic algorithm that takes into account several factors primarily consistency on the quality of the answers that directly impacts each users final compensation.
Thus promoting a virtuous cycle of better content.
Thanks so much for asking and hope this makes sense!
Look forward to seeing your progression! Best of luck! :)
If you're targeting market research it might be on purpose, but I know that personally it was an instant turn-off.
Thanks for the feedback! We will surely keep this in mind!
1) The main differences (both for the person that’s asking and the person that’s answering) are:
- Agile & guaranteed number of responses (no need to be a HOT question/topic) - Compensation model - Flexible media types (ask and answer in text, audio (voice), video, poll, and more. - Full anonymity (no social bias and/or no profile/façade to upkeep) - Robust moderation protocol - Gamified and engaging user experience - Target a profiled audience
As for incentives if you’re answering (there’s 3):
- Sake of entertainment and curiosity - To help others - Cash
2) As for unrelated (gibberish/trash) and offensive answers, all you need to do is click an immediately visible “report” button that will trigger an investigation immediately. That answer will be reimbursed and the responder drastically punished if not banned (as tolerance for this is very limited).
3) Plagiarism is not a main area of concern to be honest, in the end if a quote from someone famous or a fragment from Wikipedia are a great answer for someone that’s fine. What mainly drives the score algorithm is how useful the answer was to the person that asked the question, where it came from, not so much.
Thanks so much for asking!
>Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread.
>Off topic: blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be Show HNs. Make a regular submission instead.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
-Sourcing ideas -Depression, anxiety, and loneliness advise -Love life & relationship advise -Embarrassing situations advise -Parenting advise -Feedback on content before posting on social media (content creators or public figures for example…) -Product / service feedback Market research -Difficult life situation advise -Important decisions advise -Curious questions -Random questions -Sourcing memes or jokes -Trivia
And honestly many more, it’s up to peoples creativity as the platform provides much flexibility.
Hope this helps and thank you so much for asking!