I totally feel you. There is magic in connecting people from all over the world with the power of the internet, but it gets ruined by the few who spam and abuse the platform. I hope to prevent this by not offering any vanity feature right now (no pictures or cam) and by making it super open, instead of a 1:1 chat. The holy grail would be to put this behind a paywall and only those who need this service the most would pay to use it, guaranteeing some standard of behavior

I think you need some moderation technique for any community - mores are not inherent in a society, they are formed through dialogue and enforcement. Digital communities are not immune to this dynamic. The digital tools could help you enforce rules more efficiently but someone still has to formulate the rules and adjudicate tricky situations.

The good thing is that the prior experience of lesser-known and more-famous online communities/media outlets has given the next entrant in this space plenty of accumulated wisdom to capitalize on.

Paywalls are part of the solution but they can't be the only one because there's always the tradeoff there between making the cost high enough to weed out the majority of bots and fly-by-night spammers, but also low enough that it's not a significant barrier to entry for community growth.

You get me. I am torn between releasing cool features to help people feel connected and holding them back until I have established some sort of code of conduct. Move fast and break things along the way, or try to do it right, especially when the people on the platform would bias towards the vulnerable ones. The engagement I am seeing right now feels magical, and I am afraid if I don't move fast enough, people would lose interest and not come back.

Simple up/down thumb feedback and some graph theory... See if you can find large components of positive interaction, and only connect the people who get more than a couple down-thumbs to each other.

And maybe a 'did this person show you their penis?' feedback toggle for good measure.

haha, that last category is a must in any social platform where you can show pic/vid or draw something!

People WILL lose interest and not re-engage - that's the default state for any social network. You have to figure out why they would come back - is it to re-connect with someone they spoke to, or to read some new content on the site, or to express again how they are feeling? And how do you make this all easy through the features you build?

You can start with some basic Code of Conduct that let's say Github, Reddit or Twitter uses - no need to reinvent the wheel. Then you can modify it as time goes to suit what's working or not for your community.

If you have a good model for iterative improvement that puts the user in the loop somehow, it'll be reflected in your engagement stats.

Using Call of Duty (a military game) with voice chat was oddly similar experience. You can match with two other teammates, then you chat as you help each other succeed in the game, naturally building rapport. Then the game round ends and… that's it, you'll never talk to those people again. It's very abrupt and makes the whole interaction feel weirdly transactional.

I’ve noticed the same thing. It’s awkward to send a ‘friend’ request after one round, yet if you enjoyed the round it would be great to do another.

Recently in LoL I've been sending a friend request to anyone I have more fun with than the average random, and queueing with friends whenever possible. It is a little awkward, but definitely nicer than just randoms. Some players I'll play a few with then unfriend, if I learn that they're generally dislikable.

Wonder if you could ask them before the round ends, "y'all wanna play another?"

That game is pro-war US military propaganda. Feed your brain better things. At least PUBG doesn't have a real world agenda.