When I was throwing away old stuff, I found a diary entry from 25 years ago capturing a glimpse of the internet. As a 7-year-old AOL user in 1996 I pressed the report button and wondered about the big mystery of the world:

What happens when you report someone online?

Since the beginning of time, it’s always been a dude’s first name followed by a string of numbers who make the internet a little worse.

If my memory is correct, I was very lucky to have been let loose on the internet since age 6. First on Prodigy then AOL chatrooms. If you’re a parent and you can’t possibly imagine the horrors of letting your young kid loose on the internet: overall, it wasn't bad. It was great.

I loved talking to people around the world as a child and had hundreds of positive interactions. I taught myself how to avoid terrible people. BUT, the internet was a lot kinder and much smaller in the mid-90s. I don't endorse letting your kid roam free on the internet today.

One of my favorite activities was entering AOL chatrooms to roleplay as other people, ages, genders, and professions. Even though I was a 7 y.o. girl in Illinois who played with Barbies, I could decide: “Today I’m going to be a 14 year old boy in Florida who loves alligators.”

To find someone who wanted to enter my imaginary world, I'd find topical chatroom like "reptile fans", then I'd type:

"Press 555 if you want to talk to a 14/M/FL"

Whoever typed 555 and seemed interesting, I'd peel off into a 1:1 chat and then I'd invent a person in real-time.

While mostly incredible, if I ended up chatting with a weirdo, I’d leave / find someone else. Or I’d report. But I wondered what was behind AOL’s mod system. What happens when you report? I think this question was very important to me, because I rarely ever wrote in my diary.

Today I have my own tiny social network and it's important to me to design a system where people don’t have to wonder if they’re supported, safe, and okay, while still having the freedom to explore different facets of their personality and self.

There is a danger to social networks push for “authentic self” as a measure to prevent abuse. While accountability can totally help, it’s refreshing to be online without revealing "what you do and who you are in IRL”. On many social networks, I feel stalked. Everything is linked.

I think about the delightful feeling of the option to invent-yourself-anew from my childhood as something that exists on my app Dialup.

Within anonymity, there’s measures to keep the Justin6533’s of the world from being part of the community. You look at behavior and feedback.

Looking at someone's reports, scanning feedback about them, and seeing if people enjoy interacting with the user anonymously from who they are IRL is a good way to determine who gets banned. This also prevents public figures from getting away with shit.

Back to the question in my diary: it's tough, but social networks can have more transparency into 'how reports work' (w/out helping people game the report-system itself)—and demonstrate a looming sense of safety within the product design, so that users know they're taken care of.

Also plz don't let Justin6533 onto your app or I'll sign off.