How we moderate
A short piece on how XES handles moderation, why the system has the shape it does, and how it would have to bend at scale.
Read →Notes from the XES project — what I’m building, what I’ve learned, and the occasional thought on talking to strangers.
A short piece on how XES handles moderation, why the system has the shape it does, and how it would have to bend at scale.
Read →Voice is the easier mode for talking to a stranger, not the scarier one. Why the medium changes the call.
Read →Group rooms hold up to eight people. They’re for specific things. A short note on which.
Read →Three things to know about voice-calling people in other countries. Mostly common sense, but the common sense version is worth saying.
Read →Five concrete things to check before trusting a voice chat platform. None of them require reading the whole TOS.
Read →Voice chat is one of the few platforms where accessibility isn’t bolted on after launch. It’s the medium itself.
Read →Most platforms marketed as “no signup” quietly require one within a week of use. What a genuine no-signup voice chat looks like.
Read →Voice without video isn’t a downgrade. Three things actually change the second you drop the camera.
Read →A mild defence of small talk. Not every call needs to land somewhere. Most of the good ones don’t.
Read →The honest list of things to notice on a voice call. Most safety lists rehearse the obvious; here are the ones that actually come up.
Read →Five concrete, small things. Not a programme, not a guide. Things that have helped people I’ve spoken to about this.
Read →An honest answer to whether voice calls with strangers actually help anyone. Modestly yes, in specific ways, and not in others.
Read →The good calls aren’t amazing. They’re ordinary. A note on why aiming for amazing is the wrong frame.
Read →The case for voice with no camera, plainly stated. It’s most of the benefit, with the cost of being looked at removed.
Read →There’s no magic opener. A note on what actually works in the first five seconds, plus what doesn’t.
Read →The slug exists because people search it. A short, honest piece on why random chat isn’t a dating platform and treating it as one is part of why Omegle ended up where it did.
Read →A certain kind of bloke turns up to every chat site with one objective: find a woman. It doesn’t work, it wrecks the place for everyone, and we’ve built the site so it doesn’t pay off.
Read →Why anonymity does real work for people with social anxiety. Three properties of an anonymous call that an ordinary conversation doesn’t have.
Read →Peer to peer in plain English. What the audio actually does, where the servers come in, and why it’s the architectural difference that the rest of the platform’s claims rest on.
Read →“Safer” is one of the most overused words in chat-app marketing copy. What it usually means — and what would actually be safer.
Read →Why people use random matching when there are profiles to scroll. The short answer is that scrolling profiles is a lot of work.
Read →Three eras of random chat, each one solving part of the problem and ducking the rest.
Read →Most “best alternatives” listicles are pay-to-rank. A small framework that isn’t.
Read →Five inputs into one number per candidate. Not magic, not a black box. A walkthrough of the actual matching logic.
Read →Group calls are good for some things, mostly playing games and arguing. One-on-one is better for everything else, and the reason is structural.
Read →Text mode exists because sometimes you can’t talk. A short note on when to use it and what it’s not for.
Read →AirTalk took Omegle’s template and made it worse in the bits you don’t see. A short comparison.
Read →Monkey was built on Snap Kit, kept getting kicked off iOS, and the 15-second video format was the actual product. A short note on what an alternative actually means.
Read →Not a comprehensive guide. The five questions most people actually have before their first call, answered briefly.
Read →Trying to make a “real connection” on a random call is the wrong target. Aim for a good call; the rest follows.
Read →The thing that drains an introvert at a party isn’t the talking. It’s the rest of it. Voice chat strips most of that away.
Read →The terms of service that said they could listen, the SFU routing every call through their servers, and a moderation queue that no one was opening. Why I built something else.
Read →Moderating voice without listening to the calls is a different problem. What community-driven moderation actually looks like on XES.
Read →Practical safety, not a lecture. What the platform does for you and what you do for yourself.
Read →Why late-night loneliness is different from daytime loneliness, and what voice chat actually does for it.
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