Aug 22, 2014

August 22, 2014 4:35 pm August 22, 2014 4:51 pm Photo Secret said it was increasing its protections against people posting people’s names or other personal information.Credit What would you say if no one knew you were the one saying it? In the case of Secret, the anonymous social app many in Silicon Valley love to hate , a lot of that chatter hasn’t been so kind. People using Secret can post messages and photos from their smartphones to their networks of loosely connected friends, all through a veil of anonymity. And since January, when the app was released, some users have posted vitriolic, personal attacks against specific people — an activity that seems to happen more often when you can say anything without fear of retaliation. On Friday Secret announced plans to invest heavily in making the network a more pleasant place to visit. The company said it would actively block a post if the company detected that someone’s real name had been used in the post. Secret said it had also improved its ability to detect negative sentiment and keywords, as well as photos of specific people, which can be reviewed to make sure the posts do not violate the company’s community guidelines. Technology entrepreneurs like Dave Morin, chief executive of Path , and Ben Parr, a former blogger for the media start-up Mashable, were constant targets of personal attacks from anonymous naysayers when Secret was first introduced. Later, as Secret became more popular, misogynistic and racist remarks appeared with more frequency on the app. Pictures containing nudity have occasionally appeared as well. For David Byttow and Chrys Bader, Secret’s co-founders, the goal of the app isn’t to create an anonymous shooting gallery. Ultimately, the two would like the app to be a place people visit because of its flourishing, connected mobile community, one free from the strictures of identity. “We’ve learned several invaluable lessons about the great use cases of our platform, as well as the realities of unwanted behavior that can hurt our community,” the company said in a blog post on Friday. “We believe these improvements will move us along in our journey to help the world safely express what we’re really thinking and feeling.” Anonymous communication has quickly become a hot trend in Silicon Valley. Besides Secret, apps like Whisper and Wut riff on anonymous communication methods. Websites like Reddit and Twitter give you the option to use a handle instead of your real name. And even Facebook, the huge social identity network, is toying with ways to incorporate anonymity into its products. Of course, Secret’s viability as an anonymous communication tool could quickly evaporate if it can’t protect anonymity. On Friday, Wired published an article detailing how two security experts unmasked the identities of some users on Secret. “User data has never been compromised in any hacker exploit, including the hack that Wired reported on today,” the company said in a statement. The hole in Secret’s system was reported to the company as part of its “bug bounty program,” a practice Facebook, Twitter and other tech companies have, in which hackers who find exploits in code can report them to the company for a reward. But the changes announced on Friday raise another question, too: Can Secret keep users returning to the app if the company places more restrictions on the types of content people are allowed to post? Perhaps Mr. Byttow and Mr. Bader should ask Twitter, which is facing its own similar problem at the moment .