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Talk to people who are on the same site 🌎 | Chrome Extension

Rajesh Joshi on June 04, 2022

Hello Coders 👋 For past few weeks, I've been working on a web extension 🌎 for Chromium Base Browsers. What it does? 🤔 An extension tha...

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Ben Halpern • Jun 4 '22

Neat idea. Definitely keep an eye out for possible abuse.

Uriel Bitton • Jun 5 '22

Just implement all initial conversations as message requests like Facebook does and that takes care of pretty much all abuse.

Combined with an option to block or delete a conversation youve really got everything covered.

Rajesh Joshi • Jun 6 '22

✨ The Extension is now 🔴 Live ✨

Hitchweb! Browser Extension🧩, Talk to people on same website 🤩

Rajesh Joshi ・ Jun 6 ・ 1 min read

#javascript #webdev #react #programming

Rajesh Joshi • Jun 4 '22

If @ben (the Founder of dev.to) likes the idea, then it must be a good idea.

Thanks man.

Ben Halpern • Jun 4 '22

I guess it depends on your definition of good 😆

But yes, this is definitely clever and fun.

Rajesh Joshi • Jun 4 '22

❤️

Ian Pride • Jun 4 '22 • Edited

There's loads of potential for abuse and security issues in everything on the internet, there always has been, and there always will be. I appreciate the gung-ho efforts younger devs are giving to try and make it secure, but it's never going to happen; it will always be a losing game. Some of us gray hatters and those infamous "scary" black hatters out here in our onion communities will always make sure of that and have been ahead of the game ever since I've been part of the tech community (mid - late 90s?). Cyber Security as it stands is a very scary and sick joke; I have watched it (de) evolve over the years and it's only got worse and it's only going to get even worse. Incredible headway is already being made in breaking ALL containers.

Security (as most of us should know) is the responsibility of the user (1st and foremost). I'll be damned if I'm putting my faith in some host or some container to "protect" me.

I'm not saying "go ahead and do these types of insecure things" or just "give up" on Cyber Security. As a programmer (and someone that doesn't conform too well to nonsensical rules) I understand all too well the concept of someone telling me I can't do something and me doing it anyway, but it's still scary and funny to watch at the same time none-the-less and we SHOULD NOT TRUST IN MODERN SECURITY.

My main point is that if we keep at this rate of stressing on security then eventually no one will be able to do ANYTHING at all on the internet because NONE of it is secure.

Rajesh Joshi • Jun 6 '22

✨ The Extension is now 🔴 Live ✨

Hitchweb! Browser Extension🧩, Talk to people on same website 🤩

Rajesh Joshi ・ Jun 6 ・ 1 min read

#javascript #webdev #react #programming

Kent Brewster • Jun 5 '22

It sounds like you're re-inventing Third Voice. Background here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Voice; please try to avoid the traps they stepped on.

As long as the extension asks permission for each domain you visit before allowing it to work I can't see why Google would call this an abuse of power. As others have said this is ripe for hijinks; imagine you're an Etsy seller, but a dozen bots are camped out on your page waiting to show you exactly where to get a knockoff of your creation for half price.

$fractalbob profile image$

Robert Uomini • Sep 10 '23 • Edited

Hitchweb sounds like OpenComments, which I originally developed in 2016. It's now gone beyond an extension for Chromium-based and Firefox browsers to a Web app and an Android app.

Rajesh Joshi • Jun 6 '22

✨ The Extension is now 🔴 Live ✨

Hitchweb! Browser Extension🧩, Talk to people on same website 🤩

Rajesh Joshi ・ Jun 6 ・ 1 min read

#javascript #webdev #react #programming

Rachit Khurana • Jun 4 '22

Awesome idea, but your second use case doesn't fit well.
"Talk to people before making any transaction on an eCommerce site"

for eg. if I bought x from amazon, why would I go to X's page on amazon after buying it?

Rajesh Joshi • Jun 4 '22

Thank you Rachit for the appreciation.

Your thought is obvious, by that example what I actually meant was, you may talk to others that are planing to buy the same product, know their perspective and based on that you may take a better decision.

That was just one example, there are unlimited possibilities with this.

Rajesh Joshi • Jun 6 '22

✨ The Extension is now 🔴 Live ✨

Hitchweb! Browser Extension🧩, Talk to people on same website 🤩

Rajesh Joshi ・ Jun 6 ・ 1 min read

#javascript #webdev #react #programming

Kevin Peckham • Jun 17 '22

Interesting idea. Kudos to you for making it happen.

This reminds me of an agency site from many years ago (circa 2009) Red Universe, which gave all site visitors a cartoon avatar, and you would explore the landscape of content by flying or walking around and if you approached another avatar you could chat with them. It blew my mind… it would have been a mind boggling amount of work to produce with the available tools at the time…

These kinds of ideas challenge the third wall of websites, this idea that we are alone on a site while in reality there are sometimes thousands of other users there doing the same thing you are.

One of the reasons people are drawn to leaving comments or reading comments is it brings that social component back to an otherwise solitary activity… not saying this is always a good thing, but is interesting to consider nonetheless.

Chat takes the positive and negative aspects of comments and amplifies them.

I could imagine a lot of dystopian things that uses could do with this… but some fun things too… imagine chatting with someone on one site, then playing hide and go seek with them across the internet, by leaving hints as to which site you’ll visit.

But of course as others have said, and I will say again don’t underestimate how bad actors tend to take something fun and novel and make it dark, dangerous and cruel.