“Secret”: Anonymous Social Network Fits China Particularly

Never has an app increased explosively on its debut, or gained such attention in only a few days, like the newly launched anonymous social network app “Secret” in China. Secret is thrown to the crowd like a bomb, blowing up people’s masks that they wear for so long.

Some say it arouses the evil side of humanity, while others think it makes people real. Lin Chengren, founder of Secret, responded to these doubts in a recent interview with Sina Technology.

Anonymous Social Network Fits China Particularly

Lin and the core members of his team come from the recommending system group of US Amazon. In 2009, they came back to China and started their own business – information recommending website Wumi.com (无觅网) and an article recommending plug-in Wumi, which could recommend relevant readings according to the content of article. Ifeng.com, blog.163.com, caixin.com are all users of Wumi plug-in. “You may have never heard about our product, but you must have used it. You just don’t know,” said Lin.

But he gradually realized that the users were flowing to the mobile end, and it would be hard for a PC plug-in to have profitable business mode though it could gain large traffic. It needed a breakthrough.

“I have profound experience myself – the more friends you have, the less you want to update your Facebook, because there’s always something that you don’t want someone to see.” Lin said it was the same with Weibo and WeChat. You always update a lot at the beginning, but less and less as time goes by.

Lin thought that that social network with real name systems had a nature of monopoly and the tycoons would always be strong. For example, after WeChat’s expansion, other similar products would not have space for further development any more. Consequently, the rise of anonymous social network in recent years attracted his attention.

“Anonymous social network fits China particularly. We Chinese people will be a bit more polite when talking face to face and don’t feel like saying directly. We always wear masks in front of the employers or senior people. So in China, truth is precious, but nowhere to find. So we think anonymous social network will be in great demand and start Secret,” said Lin.

Anonymity Is the Crux

For an anonymous social network, making sure the anonymity, or users’ privacy, is the core. Lin introduced its strict privacy protection system:

1. You can find nothing on the app’s page to recognize the author. All the secrets and comments are without author’s names or profile photos. Comments for each secret will have random avatars and different secrets have different avatars.

2. During the data transmission, users’ contact lists and passwords are hashed by one-way encryption and random salts. Even secret’s staffs don’t know who post the secrets. Decoding is impossible even if the data are stolen.

3. Once a user said that one could find out who post the secrets by adding or deleting names in the contact lists, but Lin has contacted him and proved the invalidity of this method.

According to Lin, one’s direct friends are in the Level 1, and indirect ones are in the Level 2, but a small number of them are randomly hashed. Only those with lots of friends will be able to see who the secrets belong to, Level 1 friends or Level 2 friends, and one cannot use Secret if he or she has less than three friends in the contact list.

In order to obtain users as quickly as possible, Secret has a controversial design – users can log in with other mobile phone numbers without verification codes through messages. “It is not a loophole,” Lin said, “we designed it deliberately.” Even if you log in with other phone numbers, you can only see the secrets derived from your own contact lists and the owner can get the account back at any time with all your posts being deleted.

Celebrities’ Power of Discourse Has Been Undermined Unprecedentedly

Anonymity stimulates the evil side of human nature. Groundless rumors and malicious accusations have soon flooded some people’s Secret. A media person determined to delete Secret after using for four days and “will not install it again, never.” He said on Pingwest,

“When you find something ridiculous or even completely slander and attack on Secret, you will delete it angrily by instinct. Secret is encouraging us to do such a thing: feel free to say anything. Come what way, you don’t need to be responsible for your words, because you cannot at all.”

Lin responded,

“one of Secret’s specialties is that different circles have different topics. The circle of students is themed with secret love and confession, and the circle of investors favors inside stories of programs and investors. The circles of entertainment and Internet are somewhat special, for users there love to defame others. People of We-Media are especially targeted.”

Lin said these people are usually influential in the real-name social networks like weibo and WeChat, and the dissatisfaction also accumulates under the table. “We are now designing a mechanism of reward and punishment, to make users responsible for their words.”

“Celebrities own no power on Secret. Whoever you are, your words are of equal importance here. The power of celebrities has been undermined unprecedentedly, which accounts for we-media people’s resistance to Secret.” Lin said Secret has done a lot on the censorship of the content since the beginning, and any rumor or attack with a real name will be deleted and the account will be banned to post or even to post any more.

When it came to the possibility of talking about sensitive information concerning politics, Lin seemed quite relaxed. He disclosed that he indeed had been worried about it before, but only to find that nobody cared about politics. But the policy is still strict – to ban any account referring to politics.

“It has been only weeks since the launch of Secret,” said Lin at last, “we may continuously adjust the form of our product to the real world. We hope Secret can satisfy such a demand – every user can let go of the identity and express the thoughts in mind, putting attention on the content itself instead of the identity of the authors.”

Source: Huxiu.com