Show HN: Alias – Google Alerts for your favorite people(alias.co)

153 pointsby jonathancaihá 5 anos86 comments

Show HN: Alias – Google Alerts for your favorite people

http://alias.co?ref=hn

90 comments

Probably like a lot of you on HN, in my downtime, I closely follow people that I think are high-signal in their various domains (science, computers, startups, longevity, philosophy, cryptocurrencies, etc).

Once I find someone, I consume all their content obsessively, reading all their books, tweets, essays, and watch their videos/podcasts.

But I noticed a few problems: 1. A person's content is scattered around the web on multiple platforms. 2. Twitter is too fresh and noisy. It's hard to find someone's most seminal work across the years. 3. It's unusually difficult to be told/notified every time they release something new. People don't always like to self-advertise all their podcast appearances, or panels/interviews they've done.

So we built alias to address these issues - we've indexed all the content on some of the best creators in many fields, for you to subscribe to, which means you get an email whenever they release content.

For info on how this is built - Some of the indexing is done by cron jobs that fetch from RSS feeds, utilizes the Twitter API, and scrapes the web, but also some of it is manual, performed data contractors.

We'd love to hear your feedback and also - whose profile would you like to see on the site next?

xenahá 5 anos

I have mixed feelings about this as someone that creates a bunch of content across different platforms. I intentionally spread it out across platforms as different platforms have different groups of people that follow me and engage with things differently. This is a nice idea but feels like it could be used for stalking. It would be nice if there was an explicit opt-in for creators having their feeds associated here instead of them being aggregated somehow and put there through some heuristic.

optymizerhá 5 anos

Thinking about the strategy you outlined: wouldn't a real stalker, by definition, put in the extra effort to seek you out on all the various platforms, whereas a normal user wouldn't?

You're effectively decreasing the chances of your users finding more of your content, without actually mitigating stalking activity, which sounds like a net loss for you.

hintophá 5 anos

If you want to keep your identities separate, then use different identities (hopefully Alias will not dox you). If you want people to have to manually find your different public profiles and not use a tool to do so, that sounds unreasonable.

iMuzzhá 5 anos

Appreciate the feedback here /u/xena —

> This is a nice idea but feels like it could be used for stalking.

So we make sure to only aggregate publicly available information that the creator released and never include pieces about them or from someone else. We also make sure not to aggregate any gated/paywalled content.

The problem with having every creator opt-in is that that we'd never be able to launch the profiles because there are so many creators. But maybe we could have an opt-out? We actually have the ability for creators to claim their profiles as well and make changes/edits. So in theory, a creator that doesn't want to be indexed could hide all the content on their profile.

Does that address the concern? open to any other ideas you might have!

austinjphá 5 anos

> The problem with having every creator opt-in is that that we'd never be able to launch the profiles

So... I feel that's a somewhat disingenuous perspective. You've created a problem for others (e.g. xena's concern that their deliberate efforts to distribute their output and mitigate stalking) while suggesting that your need to "launch" is more important.

I see that you've asked for suggestions for alternative models, but did you consider asking this before launching?

A cynical perspective might be that you're aiming to exploit popular content without the hassle of attracting authors to your platform. Perhaps you want to take on substack while avoiding the hosting responsibility?

You suggest you might deign to allow authors to "opt out". What about the reverse: given the choice, why would they opt in?

Sorry to be so negative, but this really looks like a land-grab. Maybe I'm wrong.

I actually really like the idea of "everything in one place", but an RSS aggregator and some curated social media feeds surely work just as well?

sneakhá 5 anos

I think most stalking is simply aggregation of totally public data.

As such, I think "stalking" is a bit of an overblown term for it, but it remains the fact that in the common usage one could engage in this so-called "stalking" consuming only publicly available data.

stevenicrhá 5 anos

Maybe ""stalking" is a bit of an overblown term for it" as the term for what they are doing..

however when this is done for nefarious purposes it's called doxxing (sp) by some - and that is usually done with the intent to defame and to push others to do other harmful, often offline things, with the combined info.

Which is worst than stalking imho / in most cases.

Luckily it seems that this service is not doxxing everyone on the internet -

I hope it will not have a field where people can enter a name and have it auto-dox people - and there would be some tripwires for when people may add porn stars / onlyfans / cam girls - stuff like that or example.

I guess it could also get nasty if certain (right/left) wing people were combined with ill intent - especially if you could trick the system into adding some things that were not true.

random thoughts, not completed.

I have a semi-old business idea that could use the tech stack this is putting together that would be helpful and easy to monetize - not huge scale like twitter, but certainly could be pop enough to make recurring money without much human hands on.

jimmySixDOFhá 5 anos

Speaking of doxxing (on a tangent of course, nothing bad going on here I quite like the idea of a customized webcrawler feed as-a-service) , there is some great coverage over on Motherboard about MAID data brokers and PII matching [1] and it's ability to fall in to the wrong hands [2] :

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/epnmvz/industry-unmasks-at-s...

[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkbxp8/grindr-location-data-...

iMuzzhá 5 anos

Well that's a fair point!

We're trying pretty hard to not come off as professional stalkers while still building something useful :)

spoonjimhá 5 anos

> The problem with having every creator opt-in is that that we'd never be able to launch the profiles because there are so many creators.

This is only a “problem” if you take “this service should exist” as axiomatic.

steventeyhá 5 anos

Have been following Alias for over a year now and am truly impressed by the amount of progress that you guys have made in such a short period of time!

One quick feedback that I have is on the homepage when you click on "Show More", maybe display more than just 1 row (3-4 would be idea) so I don't have to click it multiple times! :D

tillcarloshá 5 anos

5 years ago we scraped the itunes podcast database to do exactly that. matching was a PITA though.

Then we emailed the creators and got some interesting answers out.

punchline: creators wanted better opportunities for appearing on other high-value podcasts.

Your approach is different. I hope you find success in it. It’s definitely great product development!

iMuzzhá 5 anos

Thanks! Agreed — and simple enough for us to fix. :)

JoshTripletthá 5 anos

I like the concept. But I found myself thinking "who that I follow is prominent enough to be listed". I'd love to say "this is my Twitter account, tell me who of the people I follow is listed on your service". Note that you shouldn't need to make me link my Twitter account or give you any permissions to do that; the list of people I follow is available to anyone with a Twitter account.