MaskerAid iOS App

[Grustaf]

I heard him say on some podcast that he thinks there is a possibility for him to make real money on this, but I would say there isn't. Very few people care about this, and almost none of that already small group will have heard of the app.

Plus I can't even see how this simplifies anything, if you're posting to instagram it's surely simpler to skip the extra step and just use instagram's built in editor, even if you have to place the emojis yourself?

Or you could just not post those photos. What's even the point of posting a photo of your child, with the face hidden? Seems very niche. Just post another photo.

Casey Liss is a very anxious person, there is nothing wrong with that but if you make apps for people like yourself, it's an advantage to be more mainstream!

[eddieroger]

Heard the same, thought the same. Casey succumbed to the struggle I find myself dealing with all the time - he found a problem with a technological solve and solved it with technology, which is only something other technologists do or want. Like you said, Instagram has a facility to already put stickers on images for people who wish to censor their pics. If they're not using Instagram, maybe the other program can do the same, if they user even cares at all. How do you convince someone with an existing workflow to change? "Why do I need another app," they will ask you. I wish him luck and applaud the nerve to go it alone in the tech world, but I'm not sure this is a diamond waiting to be found.

[earthboundkid]

I said on Twitter that there is a very obvious revenue strategy here. Pivot from tots to thots. Thots need to post censored versions of their photos on Instagram as the top of their Only Fans funnel. It’s a business expense for them. Seed it to some influencers but ask them to leave on the watermarks and then wait for other cam girls to buy it because all their friends are using it.

[eckza]

Personally, I've been waiting for an app like this for a long time.

I don't use social media, but I have a group chat with a handful of close friends. Sometimes, I like to insert emojis into a photo for comedic effect.

Now I can do this without fighting with iOS's horrible Markup editor.

(Quite frankly, I'm surprised that this isn't part of iOS already.)

[prea]

> What's even the point of posting a photo of your child, with the face hidden? Seems very niche.

Might be a cultural US thing, but this is something my wife does a lot and I see a lot of people doing. It's one of those things that might not make sense if you don't have kids.

[_fat_santa]

You also have to consider the modal, a one time 99 cent purchase. As much as a despise all those apps with subscriptions, it's the only way for an app like this to bring in the dough.

That is not so say what the developer here did was wrong, I commend him for having the integrity to not reach for a "99cents/month" subscription, but that is unfortunately where all the money is unless you have a high volume app.

[scarface74]

There is another reason that he mentioned. If podcasting doesn’t work out, he can show that he still has up to date iOS development skills.

[gnicholas]

I recently saw a friend post photos like this on FB. She was visiting her sister and blocked the sister's kids' faces. She didn't block the faces of her own kids, who are much older. Made sense to me! I don't know how often I'd use the app, but I've just downloaded it. I'm sure my kids would have fun playing with it, regardless!

[vohu43]

Guess you have no idea with what apps you can make money :) If you have a decent app and good pricing you can convert something between 1-5% of downloads to paying customers. With his audience and reach he can easily make real money. Probably not life changing, but still a few hundred bucks each month.

[brundolf]

I know lots of pseudonymous people on Twitter who have large enough followings that they don't want to share their face or real name, and I've seen them do this sort of thing

[ziml77]

I'm not sure why a bunch of commenters are dismissing the idea of hiding faces by placing emoji over them. That's already a thing. I see it a lot on photos that are shared online. It's a good alternatives to having to carefully frame or crop an image to hide objects and faces you don't want others to see.

[micheljansen]

As a parent of a preschooler I can confirm this is definitely a thing. We have decided to do what we can to avoid our child’s life being subject to data mining or the creation of shadow profiles by whatever company (past or present) thinks it can profit from it. We always cover his face with an emoji. So do most of the parents in our social circle.

[samwestdev]

App has already 317 ratings on the App Store. Crazy what the power of hosting a popular tech podcast can do for you.

[sdimitris]

Nice implementation! We made a similar app a couple of years ago as part of a hackathon project but we never really polished it to submit to an app store

Description: https://devpost.com/software/patronus-k61iv4

Code: https://github.com/parasmehta/patronus

Unlike this app, we also used age and emotion detection on top of face recognition.

[elpakal]

Hey, mine detects and redacts faces too (++text and ++macOS) https://gorp.app

[WoodenChair]

How do you feel about the fact that yours has been out for a couple years, does essentially the same thing (although maybe has less appealing marketing images on the App Store TBH), and only has a handful of ratings compared to the 300+ for this new app from this popular podcaster? I ask sincerely, and I wonder if it speaks to the power of marketing.

[gpmcadam]

FYI Markup, a feature of the Photos app in iOS can essentially do this fairly trivially.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT206885

[kemayo]

True, but it's honestly pretty fiddly. If you want to do exactly-this, adding an emoji is a pain because you have to jump through a few hoops to resize it -- pinch-dragging doesn't work.

[deanc]

This is such an obvious thing now that I see it. Great idea and execution. One might argue this should be a feature available natively, and a valid use-case for face-detection other than identification and tagging.

[jwhite_nc]

Is the app simple? Yes. Do you have to purchase it? No. Not sure why this turned into a critique of the programmer and subsequently his podcast and co-hosts.... weird.

[sschueller]

I wish the makers of live video apps would add an AI feature to auto blur unknown faces, car plates and mask unknown voices.

This would make it possible to legally live stream in countries with strict privacy laws like Switzerland or Germany.

[abrichr]

Can you please give some examples of live video apps you are referring to?

[paul7986]

I bet Apple or Android will probably include adding emojis the same in their photo/crop edit tools in a year or two.

People are already doing this with other apps as you see in dating apps and stuff.

[zabaki]

Added a picture with a bunch of people. Not all of them got an emoji, so as I continued to add emojis, I wanted to pinch to zoom but that behaviour turned out to be for the emoji. Handling a tiny emoji was really add, so I’d appreciate be able to zoom in and out of the picture when I have to add more emojis :)

[thomasjudge]

As seen on the "Accidental Tech Podcast" atp.fm

[xcambar]

> There’s several reasons you may want to hide a face:

> [...]

> * The faces of protestors who are standing up against a grotesque war

I don't know if I find this disgustingly opportunistic or a solid gesture of protest and support.

Maybe both

[ravi-delia]

Creator clearly wants the app for their own use case, but correctly identified another. It is neither.

[Larrikin]

The privacy of others was the original use I came up with when I made this same app for my final project in Intro to iOS class in grad school way back in 2017. From my initial project proposal

>Governments and tech companies such as Facebook are now continuously scanning all photos uploaded to the internet for faces, locations, and objects, effectively removing anonymity for anybody that is in any picture. A user might want to share a picture from a protest, but other users in the background might not want it known they were there.

>I would like to make a privacy focused camera application. The application will allow the user to take a picture and then it will find the faces in the picture. The user then will have to tap on the individuals in the photo they would like to be included in the final picture. By default all the faces in the picture will be marked as discard. After the user has finished selecting the faces the final picture will be produced. The faces not selected will have an effect applied to them to obscure that person identity. The user will then have the ability to share the photo to other applications, such as Twitter.

There is a lot of code in the standard library that includes face detection, didn't even have to add any libraries and was able to do the project in the last 2 weeks of class. I ended up putting a heavy mosaic over the faces, but emojis would have been just as easy. Still preferred Android dev over iOS after it, but was impressed with the included camera features.

To me the use case seems weird that she is trying to hide her kids so she can constantly post them on Instagram, when she has full control over taking pictures of her kids and what she puts on her page.

[matt_heimer]

In addition to emojis, imagine if this had deep fake support. For the war protestor use-case imagine if everyone in the crowd having the face of Zelenskyy.

It'd be nice if this was usually built into whatever social media app people use but I wouldn't trust most social media companies to not store the original image.

A sea of mini Nickolas Cage faces in pictures of your child at a playground would entertain some people.

[InTheArena]

Virtue signaling at it's best.

(In this case, there is true virtue - but profoundly unlikely to be safely applied in the use case that exists)

[kennydude]

I love it. I'd love to also see something like this that can hide or change number plates of cars before posting online.

[jachee]

Why? I’ve never understood this practice. The number plate is already out in public nearly 24/7 anyway, what difference does it make if it’s unobscured in a photograph, unless it’s a stolen car or plate or something?

[DHPersonal]

Another similar app that also works with video: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anonymous-camera/id1504102584

[wronglebowski]

Where I struggle with this is on the basis of the idea. At this point why not turn everyone into a Holo Live character or some other metaverse style creation? Our face is part of who we are and removing that feels very unnatural to me.

[ethanbond]

I think the point is in fact to obscure the subjects' identity.

[FirstLvR]

the app is simple and clever... tho, you should NOT post personnal stuff on social platforms, do NOT post pictures of your kids ... the internet has become a dreamland for pedos and psychos

[rchaud]

I agree, but only a small % of parents are going to refrain from the temptation to share pics widely, and that means online. So this app has a very beneficial use case.

[oh_sigh]

So you're saying pedos are going to be jerking off to the image of two kids standing with their mother, possibly on their first day of school?

[minton]

It seems like a significant investment to spend six months developing an iOS app solo, knowing it will likely be cloned and copied within a month.

[scarface74]

“Investment in what?” It just took some time working on a hobby and “sharpening the ax”. I waste more time watching Netflix.

If he had wanted to make serious money as an app developer, he wouldn’t have quit his day job.

[Cthulhu_]

First mover advantage, but it'll only take off if you work really hard in the first month or so to get the word out and become a 'household name'.

That said, yeah it's likely there will be competitors springing up left and right if it becomes popular (recent example is this "unpacking" game, the app store was flooded with clones within a month). For apps like this, your best hope is probably that a bigger party like Instagram knocks on your door and offers to buy you out to integrate the feature into their own apps. It's cynical, but this is where we find ourselves; I don't believe single feature apps have much of a future.

A photo manipulation app (generally speaking) is great, but unless you add a social network to it like Instagram did it's not going to go far.

[nbzso]

I don't get the use case at all. Just stop sharing images of people. We are living in backward times indeed. What is next? The social app that makes you anonymous?

[mjlee]

Have you heard of 4chan?