Hey HN! Gentle is an app where you write requests about your worries and get (gentle) replies back from strangers. It’s cute, anonymous, and moderated.

I was inspired by:

* My disappointment in how most social media today incentivizes outrage over empathy.

* The growing trend of feel-good experiences like Kind Words, Animal Crossing, Slowly, and more.

I'm interested in getting more people testing it out. Eager to take feedback and/or talk about it. :)

Direct testflight link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/tXMfOfOl

I would like to have a small way to react to a message I receive. Not reply to it, but maybe an emoji reaction or some other “thank you” to the sender.

Hey! That's one of the main features I want to add before actually launching the app. Expect to see something like that soon if you stick around in the beta!

Happy to listen to other feedback or suggestions you might have~

Hey I love your landing page! Did you design it or used a template? And how is moderation done? I assume they're very private so no person is moderating them... so a machine is doing it? Are you using some sort of off the shelf stuff?

The landing page is custom designed! So using tools like paper and Figma, and then translating into a next.js site.

Moderation is based on two things:

1. A spam/bad word filter. It's pretty aggressive and inspired by a variety of OSS tools, but definitely could be better. 2. An easy reporting tool available for any user-generated content. It could be more prominent for requests, so that's something I'll fix shortly.

I hacked together a small dashboard to surface whatever's caught by those two things. For the beta test, it's been working pretty well.

Feel free to ask any followups!

You know one thing you can do w/ content moderation is go all the way to the source, if you make it more "expensive" (by some measure, not necessarily w/ money) to send a message, then it would discourage a lot of trolls who wouldn't even bother to make the effort.

Yeah! Lots of potential in this idea. Right now it's a free-for-all, but limiting the number of things you can do in a given session might also incentivize more quality messages.

Other possibilities too. I'm trying to avoid gamification mechanics (like maintaining a request-reply ratio, like counts, etc), so that's a consideration.

Hey Andrew I just downloaded your app and it's very tastefully done! The UI just puts me at ease and is a "living breathing character" in itself, may sound silly but I definitely get the vibe. Could I reach out to you and give you some feedbacks? And I have tons of ideas about automated content moderation, etc.

Yeah! My main email for gentle-related stuff is [email protected]

Feel free to reach out and connect.

Ok sent!

For anybody who comes into this thread in the future, I've closed off public signups for the iOS beta. I've hit a critical mass of testers and want to make sure the app isn't overrun by trolls and predators. Reach out to me if you really want in [0]!

To know what's on the roadmap, checkout my public trello board [1] for more info.

[0] Email [email protected]

[1] https://trello.com/b/65BxuxBa/gentle

That’s cute and I’ll definitely try it out. I can see it failing to hit the mark for, say, minorities with particular concerns, though, simply due to sympathy versus empathy.

Agreed! It's not a silver bullet or anything like that. More like a quiet place to go to if you're inclined.

I will say one of the "rules" you agree to when you first start is "I know I can’t fix other’s problems, but I can share kindness". I know that's not enough, so it'll be something to keep working on.

Thank you for making a beautiful and thoughtful product in a vain and thoughtless age. They are few and far between these days. Also, .app domains rule.

Is the app meant to really only work on iPhone or is there a way to turn off mandatory 90° screen rotation on an iPad other than assistive touch?

Hey! For now I have it locked to portrait orientation and no official support for iPad. Very sorry for the trouble with this — it does sound annoying. I'll look into enabling iPad-specific rotation.

Uhm. why is the website requesting access to my webVR?

That's... unusual and concerning. You're talking about the gentle.app site, not the testflight link, right?

The only thing I could think of to cause that is the embedded vimeo iframe. But why? If you're open to share, I'd love to know what browser you're using.

Not the person you are replying to, but on Firefox 75 player.vimeo.com is requesting WebVR permissions on gentle.app upon first load.

Also just quickly I want to say I love the idea and intentions behind Gentle! I haven't had a chance to play around with it too much yet but it really is a pretty app too.

Thanks for the info! I guess it also only happens if you have some VR device setup. Sorry for the trouble with that. I'll swap out the vimeo embed soon since that sounds like annoying and unnerving behavior.

Also, thank you for the praise!

Yep. we site itself. An as burk96 said, it's the current Firefox. I'm assuming the vimeo player asks for VR access just in case it's a 360 video. I took a quick look at their API and help site and it doesn't look like you can turn that off. In fact, even their own support site is riddled with it :/ Seems a glaring issue on their end!

How long did this take to develop? It’s absolutely delightful

Hey! The project started in early February, so it's been around 2-1/2 months. The time was split ~50/50 between design and development.

Happy to elaborate if you have followup q's!

That is seriously impressive for that short amount of time, fantastic work!

I did comment elsewhere in this thread, but have since deleted, but I just had another question:

Can you say a bit more about the OSS libraries I’m always looking for tools to help with comments in my projects!

Thank you! I'm a bit wary of giving big hints to how the filters work, but I was inspired by:

- npm packages like redact-pii, bad-words (and numerous other "bad word" lists)

- askismet's open source spam code

- regex unicode categories

I also wrote a variety of checks for word counts, combinations of words, known "bad patterns", etc. You may not realize it, but the text input forms block a lot of potential inputs.

It's not perfect, but that's why I'm manually handling things that surface. Happy to answer any follow-ups.

I was just reading through the 'how the app keeps me safe' section. Not trying to be dour, but things like this tend to attract, trolls to put it nicely, if your service expands, you're likely to have some fairly nasty people with plenty of time and ingenuity on their side, who see your service as an opportunity to fuck with people, to put it nicely.

>We moderate the content and provide easy-to-use reporting tools.

This requires exponentially larger numbers of staff as the service grows.

>We use spam and bad word filters.

Easy to get creative around. It's pretty easy to say fairly awful things without using bad words.

>We timeout or ban users who repeatedly or flagrantly break our rules.

Easy to circumvent by changing IP'S, or if you ban by IPS, by abusing multiple accounts.

>Personally identifying information is banned from any messages.

Falls under the above issues.

>All new users agree to community expectations.

Doesn't stop people who don't care.

(Soon) If the app notices that somebody is writing about concerning topics like self-harm, it will privately and proactively offer resources from professionals.

Not really applicable to my worries.

I like the idea of your service, the internet can always use more things dedicated to just being nice, but I also know human nature and unfortunately, there's people who look at things like that as a challenge to be as horrible as possible cor no real reason other than they like being assholes.

Just to make a suggestion, some kind of shadow banning system, similar to hn could be effective here. Having been on the dark side of the shadow bans, they really do keep undesirable things at bay and do tend to be hard to notice for a while. Allowing trolls and assholes to believe they're interacting, while having their posts be invisible to the rest of users could at least help curb repeated account creation and such.

I think the key to understanding the scope for abuse is to understand the opportunity. There will always be abusive behaviour and tools are required to tackle it _but_ the majority of abusive behaviour on the internet comes from a desire for attention, and one-to-one abuse is much less common. Abusive people are typically looking for a platform to broadcast.

I think that the methods outlined on the website will help but I think the concept is inherently anti-abuse.

Context: I worked in community management for many years, dealing with some of the worst of abusive online behaviour.

I think you are in the right here. If one is trolling an audience of one, it's not really the same dopamine hit as Tweeting a death threat to a Senator that thousands see. It gets boring quick. Also, troll management as a problem is sort of like the "What if I burn $100,000 on AWS in one month?" problem. It's a good problem to have, it means you have traction, and with patience and focus the trolls can be steamrolled.

>with patience and focus the trolls can be steamrolled.

I agree with your observation that trolls are a problem that comes with scale, but I've never seen an online community solve it. At best you can only slow them down.

If anybody has some examples of large online communities that did solve trolling I would be interested to see them.

Early Flickr was really good at troll containment: https://mastersofscale.com/caterina-fake-build-a-more-human-...

"Solve" is a tall order and I'm not sure it passes that bar, but I've always liked how the Something Awful forums have dealt with trolling and other shitty behaviour: An account costs $10 and bans for trolling are handed out quite aggressively.

Screenshot the abuse, post to forums, get attention and inspire copycat abusers.

I like the idea of the service, and agree with the moderation approach, but I also think trolls are a potential problem.

I agree with all your points!

One piece that will likely help minimize spammy users and multiple accounts is that at launch, it'll be a one-time purchase app.

I do have uncertainties overall, but I'm doing my best to keep the experience clean and safe. If the experience starts to veer towards being a toxic and uncontrollable mess, I'll be quick to shut it down.

Happy to talk more about this because I do see the abuse vectors, and don't take this lightly.

Edit: on your last paragraph, shadow bans are definitely on the table

(I feel dirty asking this question, btw, but it's the first thing that came to mind when considering the GP's points.)

How do you see the system handling someone's answer to "What are you worried about?" being something like "My dad's been raping me for years but I'm worried that if I tell someone he'll get into trouble and we won't be able to carry on paying for my mom's medicine and she will die"?

That could either be someone in really difficult circumstances, or someone who is trolling others to upset them - there's no way to know from one message.

If you shadow-ban the person in difficult circumstances it's not very kind, but if you let the troll through (with identical words), whoever reads it may have an awful day agonising over how to respond.

I wouldn't call something like that toxicity, because it might be genuine distress.

I think there's better scaffolding/explaining to do with content guidelines and expectations, but the general idea is that content that causes concern like this should be reported. A lot of explicit content would probably already be caught by a filter for manual review.

It would be taken down and I would send a message to the writer with mental health or counseling resources (ex: crisis text line). I take all messages seriously by default, even if it appears to be trolling.

If that person continued to write content like that, I'd do a bit more digging. This is where it'd be subjectively up to me as the moderator to take action. Banning or shadow-banning would be a last resort, generally.

There's no strong accountability on my end (beyond people not using the app), but I'm interested in creating a system people can trust. If the app continues to gain traction, I'm thinking about writing formal moderation rules and expectations and seek input from the community.

If you have any ideas, I'm eager to listen!

Not sure a kindness app is a one time purchase app. If I buy the app I probably want some kindness my way. I would expect feedback.. and be less likely to offer kindness.

If you made asking for kindness a paying feature but allowed replies from non-paying members. You have the same spam problem but at least it is limited to replies plus it provides a revenue stream. It creates another problem because people want to give and receive (not just give).

The free open model is the best. But it has other problems.

Anyone remember spiritweb.org from early the early 2000s? They had a feature where you would ask a question and a random person would get an email asking to answer a question (but the question was not given you had to psychically guess). Kind of a neat idea but in the end it falls apart because of spam and garbage questions. For a spammer being able to send kindness would be a great opportunity.

Props on your design + dev execution.

I noticed your personal website mentions building products with React Native, but in this thread you mentioned Gentle was built with Flutter.

It's been a few years since I took a serious look at mobile, and after trying out NativeScript and React Native then, I ended up just wrapping web views. The bar for app experiences is much higher now, and it sounds like you have been able to iterate quickly without compromising quality. Will Flutter be your tool moving forward? Do you give it the upper hand over RN? Or is the difference just personal taste?

Thank you!

My impression is that my use of Flutter has been successful (especially in an iOS build) because of my heavy use of custom-designed components. There are packages built by the Flutter team to mimic native behavior, but they aren't good enough in my opinion. I'd go with react native if you want something that feels (at least on iOS) native.

The biggest plus for Flutter in my opinion is its great animation system. It's difficult to learn, but it makes things that would have been near-impossible in react native relatively straightforward.

I'd use Flutter again for sure. I'd rate it like an 8/10?

I love this idea!

I have long wished for video games based on kindness (as I used to say to my kid, "how about a game where you hug each other?") but fighting seems to be the cultural norm. There are a few exceptions, but they are exceptions.

Honest question: what's interesting in a hugging game? Children are playing games partly because they're competitive, and fighting is a simple way of competing. How can you do this with hugs?

There are plenty of fun activities that involve cooperation rather than competition. Building a bridge instead of blowing it up, for example.

Kids are generally pretty enthusiastic about such things as well until it is socialized out of them.

I always wanted to be able to play a version of Red Dead Redemption where you just build a homestead, ride your horse and play through the story with no killing.

Yeah. I've taken a few breaks on RDR2 where I put the shotties away and just go fishing for a couple days. So peaceful. I haven't played in nine months, need to fire the Xbox back up again.

If you're looking for a more gamey-version of this concept, check out Kind Words. I'm a big fan of it!

Cool landing page. I first thought the tilted elements would be a bit jarring, but then I kinda started to like them. Stimulates your brain a little bit more. Nice trick. Can't really comment on the app itself as I don't have an iPhone. Best of luck to you.

And as a frontend guy I really appreciate the proper use of summary and details elements, haha.

Thanks! Love that you looked at the source. I've been trying to build more accessible webpages lately, so I try to use semantic elements wherever.

One of the big problems with the gentle app today is that it's probably not very accessible, which is something I hope to address.

So basically, /r/toastme in an app? This might work. Great initiative.

Yeah! or /r/RandomKindness

Just tried it and my oh my, the design is amazing and it really makes the whole experience much better. I really love both the idea and the execution and I can’t wait to see what’s coming next. Amazing job! :)

Thank you! Happy to take feedback or suggestions if you have any.

Thanks for the app. I love the functionality.

Why do messages in the mailbox disappear? I want them always to remain! Especially when they are so good. Also, grouping responses would be amazing.

I would also like a thank you or a thumbs up emoji or something that makes the person who sent me a message or me feel that we're not screaming into an empty void.

In the reply tab, I was looking to swipe right - like the way cards in Google work. That seems intuitive.

Thank for you trying the app out!

On your first point: scroll down on your mailbox screen to see a history of what you've opened up! Sorry about that. It's a poor design decision on my part to make it so undiscoverable. Will fix it soon.

Reactions of some sort are one of the high priority features I plan to build.

No strong opinion from me on horizontal cards and swiping. It is intentional to add some friction to skipping a message (so it feels a bit more weighty), but I'll play with it!

Won't comment on the idea but I love the execution. The design is cheerful without being maudlin, clear without being cluttered. Super impressive!

Thank you for the praise for the design!

I'm curious about your monetization strategy here, you mention using a 1 time app purchase + other what looks like 'cosmetics/item' purchases. Correct me if I'm misunderstanding. Have you thought about making this is a subscription based app where 'professional' feedback on worries etc could be a paid feature?

Yep, that's the plan at the moment!

I'm trying to design this product so that it doesn't become a crutch for people, but rather a source of general kindness and compassion. So I think it'd need a lot more thought to figure out if professional support would fit. I'm also wary of providing "official" advice due to potential regulatory and moral issues. But I do see the potential, especially from a business perspective.

If you have any other thoughts or feedback on the app, I'm eager to listen~

Monetizing compassion and kindness! Very enlightened work.

That second part is probably sarcastic, but I agree with the potential moral hazards with this product. I hope it's evident that I've tried to design and monetize this in a way that isn't exploitative. Frankly, it's not a strong business position, but I'd rather lose money than introduce more harm into people lives.

I'm pretty happy with the planned approach of a one-time purchase because it helps sustain the product without ads .

Maybe in addition to a one-time purchase you could offer “sponsorship” subscriptions for app users who want to provide extra support.

Mental health is a lot more than "compassion and kindness". See Headspace. Probably wouldn't be where it is today if it were totally free.

This is amazing. Feels so nice. I hope this grows to something awesome. One of my colleagues had the similar idea and we were discussing of creating a webapp for it. Lol, too late now.

it’s never too late — and currently find it hard to believe that there’s more than enough demand/need for purely positive mutually beneficial exchanges, both offline & offline.

The UI and UX are serendipitous and feels almost joyous just to click and scroll. Well done.

I see this app was done in Flutter. What was the motivation to choose Flutter over React Native or SwiftUI?

Thank you for the praise for the design :)

My path to using flutter was that I wanted to use SwiftUI because of its native-ness, but found it was too buggy. I know react native well, but I realized that a lot of the interactions I wanted (e.g., animations) would be much more difficult. Flutter was a compromise that's overall been great to work with.

I do feel very at-the-whim of the flutter team's progress (mainly native behavior I can't hide behind custom UI like text editing), but that's not unique to flutter.

If you don't mind a link to reddit, I also wrote a comment about the decision [0].

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/g3qrkj/gentle_is_a_s...

This works really well, nice! Do you plan iPad support? It’s frustrating that I can’t send my email in a reply, there was a message I’d have liked to give my email and start a conversation. I understand the downside of that, but it’s frustrating to feel I could help someone and not be able to. One other thing, it’s not obvious what the number next to the skip button is about - I assumed it was a limited number of skips and was trying to figure out how they worked at first.

I'll look into iPad-compatibility and see if there's some low-lift stuff I could do. To be transparent, I would probaaaably invest in a webapp before a fully-blown iPad variant.

I hear your frustration about the limitations of what you can share. I stand pretty firmly by it for safety reasons, but I don't totally rule out the potential for a way to connect further.

Thanks for the feedback about the skip button — I agree that it's confusing. I'll work to address it soon!

Happy to take any other feedback or suggestions you might have~

"- We moderate the content and provide easy-to-use reporting tools.

- We use spam and bad word filters.

- We timeout or ban users who repeatedly or flagrantly break our rules.

- Personally identifying information is banned from any messages.

- All new users agree to community expectations."

That's all well and good, but fairly par for the course when it comes to social media (except the anonymous part, but there are plenty that do have that). I don't really see anything innovative here around making sure things stay positive.

Not at all arguing that this is novel or innovative — rather my own take on the genre. I'd argue that some aspects of the system incentivize better behavior:

- It'll be a purchased app (not free), so the stakes of being banned are higher. Right now in beta, it is more open for sure.

- The 1:1 message sending doesn't give any feedback to bad actors, so attention-seeking behavior is more limited.

- I'm also hopeful to continue to design an experience that's calm and cheerful, and provides guidance about good behavior (in a way that's more in-your-face than most social media).

Of course, there will always be malicious people, and neither I nor this project are perfect. As I mentioned elsewhere in this post, I'd be quick to shut things down if it got out of hand.

Happy to discuss this more.

By the way if people think that online kindness doesn't exist, then they should visit some online health forums.

Or OpenSimulator worlds.

Would be cool to have this app which supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights... like, acknowledge when you see a right in action, allow you to track when the rights are visibly violated and tie some set of incentives to promoting the values of the UDHR in its usage.

It's funny how a 1 degree rotation creates a new vibe.

I know, right? It's definitely a quirky vibe

This is very cool. Beyond being kind, it makes me think about what I'm about to say, and how best to say it given I don't know the audience.

Good work!

Thank you and that's amazing! It's great that you're really embracing the attitude of thinking about this other person and trying to empathize.

Reminds me of https://emotionalbaggagecheck.com/

Thanks for sharing! That's super cool and very similar in concept.

It’s actually online since the flash days, I try to contribute from time to time.

I always wondered about the privacy implications of using Google Firebase, but didn't yet take the time to investigate it thoroughly.

I hear you. I've turned off all the analytics I can with firebase, but if you don't trust Firebase/Google, I'm happy to recommend avoiding this app.

Checkout my privacy policy (and critique it too!) if that's useful: https://gentle.app/privacy

Built using flutter but no Android version :/

It's coming soon! Blocked by me getting my hands on an android device to test with.

Sorry for the trouble if you were hoping to try it out. If you're interested, you can join the subreddit for updates [0].

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/gentleapp/

The design is great. I noticed that I can’t select text while writing, which is frustrating and makes editing very difficult.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm so sorry for the frustration caused. I'll address it!

If you're curious where that comes from, the app is built with Flutter, which tries to mimic native behavior. Text editing is something that's not quite there yet, unfortunately, so I'll have to manually make fixes.

I figured it might be something like that - I believe I’ve noticed it in other apps too. But the small frustration is unfortunate when the rest of the design is so careful and does such a good job building a positive vibe.

Good luck!

I also noticed that the app makes my phone run hot. For whatever reason I think it’s chewing through battery like crazy.

This is not going to work in it's current form. The content needs to be more compelling than the premise.

I hear what you're saying. I'll say that the "compelling" I'm looking for is content that entices you to want to give some kindness. If it's not doing that, I'll work to make it better!

A feature I'm hoping to add in shortly is better scaffolding for better content, such as:

1. examples of good requests and responses 2. a brief tutorial that gives you a better sense of what's good/bad

This is just wonderful. Yes, the world needs more of this. Thank you for building and sharing it, Andrew!

Thank you! I'm really happy you tried it out

The asthetic sorta reminds me of Animal Crossing with the envelopes and such. Seems kinda neat

Super intentional. I haven't quite gotten to the cuteness and customization in animal crossing though.

Also checkout the game "Kind Words", which was a big inspiration for this.

Sounds very interesting. Hope there'll be a web or Android version so I can test it :)

It was built with the cross-platform framework Flutter, so an android version will be coming soon!

(I just don't have an android device to test with right now)

This is really fantastic and well executed. Congrats on the launch and on making this.

Thank you! If you have any, I'm happy to hear any feedback or critique

This is a fantastic idea, and great execution. Congratulations on a winner, Andrew!

Thank you! I appreciate the praise.

If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to share~

Love the design, looks great!!

Thank you! Do call out if anything seems nonintuitive or bad

This is so cool. What did you use for the send button animation...Rive?

Hey! It's a Flutter application, so I'm using their concept of Hero animations [1]. It renders a new component (the flight shuttle?) that does the visual animation.

[1] https://flutter.dev/docs/development/ui/animations/hero-anim...

FYI the Reddit link under the Android FAQ item is broken

Thanks for catching that! Fixed it up.

Design is amazing.

Thank you!

Wow, you are a craftsman. Excellent work!

Thank you! I appreciate the praise

Can't I just make a Facebook Group or a subreddit to do this instead of a whole new app?

I think this specific flow of creating a post and then receiving non-public replies back isn't normal on reddit or fb groups. I don't doubt it's possible!

Do correct me if I'm wrong.

You can for example create a subreddit where the rules are "post your worries and people will reply by DM" and moderate accordingly.

Super true! I'd argue the experience would probably be different in the context of reddit (like ads and it not being quite as streamlined), but your point is valid.

/r/toastme is one reddit example.

it's /r/roastme

> it's /r/roastme

Have you visited /r/toastme? [1]

Its whole concept is built around kindness (like the app), the opposite of /r/roastme.

1: https://old.reddit.com/r/toastme/ (link for convenience)

Overall I like the UX. But I was a bit confused by the “flag” button being on the left. I usually think the back button is there.

I think it would be better to go back to the previous message instead of scrolling through all the messages and then starting from the top. Also the reply button looks like what I’d consider a back button to be.

Thanks for the feedback! I was already planning on changing these buttons (especially to make the flag button more obvious), so I'll take this into account.

I'm curious: do you have thoughts on what a "reply" button's icon should look like?

I personally like a conversation bubble as a reply icon.

I like the idea but I also think this is trying to replace something that already exists: churches.

Churches don't appeal to everyone, they also aren't anonymous.

I'm not saying this as an anti-religion thing, churches are a great source of community and it's probably the best thing about them, just that this is a very apples-to-oranges comparison.

Also I don't think this is a replacement for anything really. A supplement perhaps.

I think I get what you're saying. I'll say that this product isn't really meant to substitute a community. In fact, I'd consider it a failure if Gentle overtook other sources of companionship in a person's life. My belief is that tech should augment rather than replace, if that makes sense.

> My belief is that tech should augment rather than replace

Love that idea - quite an insightful and healthy approach to technology in our life.

There is nothing to replace in a church if they never had a place for you.

I’m sorry you feel that way. There’s a church for everybody. I attend church online a lot mainly because it’s better for my schedule, the lessons are impactful and I’m completely comfortable in my own home.

Seriously?

This comment is wrong one more levels than I can count.

I thought the comment section was for...comments? Tolerance please.

This tool could be useful when people are particularly fragile and lonely like in a pandemic.

However— Social apps are like vitamins...they’re a poor substitute for eating real nutrient dense food.

A social app’s interest is also inversely proportional to that of the user. The app wants maximum usage online where the human benefits most from in person interaction.

I’m not trying say everyone is brainwashed on HN...but there’s a lot of herd thinking.