Frank Warren, proprietor of famous blog/community art project PostSecret announced late last week that the site was permanently pulling the best-selling app from the Apple App Store. In a post on Sunday, Warren explained, saying that the decision was based on abuses of the app and threats from anonymous users.
Like the PostSecret Blog, the App was designed so each secret was absolutely anonymous. Unfortunately, that absolute anonymity made it very challenging to permanently remove determined users with malicious intent.
99% of the secrets created were in the spirit of PostSecret. Unfortunately, the scale of secrets was so large that even 1% of bad content was overwhelming for our dedicated team of volunteer moderators who worked 24 hours a day 7 days a week removing content that was not just pornographic but also gruesome and at times threatening.
Bad content caused users to complain to me, Apple and the FBI. I was contacted by law enforcement about bad content on the App. Threats were made against users, moderators and my family. (Two specific threats were made that I am unable to talk about). As much as we tried, we were unable to maintain a bully-free environment. Weeks ago I had to remove the App from my daughter’s phone.
A secret from the PostSecret app
The PostSecret app rocketed to the top of the App Store sales chart within 24 hours of its initial release on August 28, 2011. In its short four months on the market, the PostSecret app averaged 30,000 secrets per day, totaling over two million contributions in all. Not all PostSecret secrets are melancholy though. Some secrets are random bits of interesting or funny tidbits that people may feel silly admitting in a non-anonymous way.
A recent postcard secret
While you can’t submit secrets to PostSecret through an app anymore, you can always share bits of your life you may feel too embarrassed, silly, or scared to share openly with the popular website. Fortunately, the app’s removal doesn’t change PostSecret’s traditional method of secret sharing. Here are the instructions from the PostSecret website.
This happened on my birthday…funny.