Show HN: GET Together – A social network where you don't need POST to Post
GET Together is a new social network that boldly eschews traditional HTTP methods, performing all user interactions—from creating posts to deleting them—solely through GET requests. This 'Show HN' stands out by inverting standard web paradigms, where GET is typically reserved for data retrieval, and POST for data submission. Its minimalist, URL-driven design appeals to the hacker ethos, prompting curiosity and discussion on the practicalities and implications of such an unconventional technical choice.
The Lowdown
GET Together is presented as a novel social network where every user interaction, from creating a new post to deleting an existing one, is performed exclusively through HTTP GET requests. This unconventional approach challenges common web development practices, which typically reserve GET for data retrieval and POST for data submission, creating a minimalist and API-driven user experience.
- User Identification: Names are simple (2-20 letters, numbers, or underscores), not unique, and unverified.
- Session Management: Cookies are optional for posting, but the gt_session cookie is essential for later actions like deleting a post, requiring careful management by the user.
- Idempotency & Retries: Users can provide a unique id (UUID) with their requests to ensure idempotency for safe retries; requests without an id will generate a new post each time.
- Core Endpoints: All primary actions are executed via GET requests: /post (for creating posts with name and text parameters), /feed (to retrieve posts as JSON), /heart (to add or remove likes), and /delete (to remove user-owned posts).
- Replies & Threading: Posts can be replied to by adding a parent=POST_ID parameter to the /post endpoint, creating threaded discussions. A specific post's replies can be fetched using /feed?parent=POST_ID.
- Content Moderation: The platform employs automated checks for English profanity and prohibits crypto-related content. Reports trigger an abuse review, with clear violations being hidden, but reporting alone does not guarantee removal.
- Privacy Considerations: All posts are public, and the post text is embedded directly within the URL, mandating that users avoid including any private information.
- Error Handling: The service returns specific HTTP error codes for issues like malformed requests (400), ownership or origin problems (403), and rate limiting (429).
This "Show HN" offers a provocative reinterpretation of how web interactions can be structured, emphasizing direct API interaction and URL-driven state changes. While it presents a unique technical curiosity, its design choices also highlight critical considerations around security, privacy, and traditional web development best practices.