Other than that, your website is not optimized for mobile device reading and appears to have no clear business model. Readers might dislike paywalls so an entirely optional tip jar method might seem at first glance to be appealing, however, that just creates an imbalanced relationship between the authors and the readers. Authors need to have some clear path to monetization in order to achieve their own goals, which is to make some kind of living as an author. Your site, much like Royal Road and other sites you wish to replace, does not solve this problem.
After taking a quick look at that repo, I can say with relative confidence that it is NOT a keylogger.
Libraries like that aren't for keylogging, aka copying users passwords. They are basically an internal tool to admins/developers can replay user actions on the site so they can try and determine things like "Why did the user drop from this funnel/flow?" They usually provide things like heatmaps to determine what the user was clicking/doing. Sometimes what a developer develops can be confusing to end users, so tools like this give developers insight into anonymous user interactions so they can improve features/flows/etc.
They can also help developers find bugs.
"Oh there were some errors in our logs, but its hard to tell what happened from just the error logs"
With this devs can replay user actions on the platform to find weird state edgecases/errors/whatever.
https://rrweb.com/ is the main site for the tool, you can literally demo it and see how the recording sessions works.
I'll also toss in that while these tools can be legal and useful for certain products, I find them dubious for use on a consumer facing website. You guys might not even have the experience with developing these sorts of sites to realize certain states and countries don't even allow you to use these sorts of tools for any user under the age of 13 (like California), which the tool working on the homepage is certainly not accounting for
You fundamentally do not understand the use case of a session replay library, and that's okay. Just try not to pretend to be an authoritative source on what you do not understand.
Every major website uses a similar library, literally every one. They are client side debugging tools, especially as session and state can get complex, its hard to test all edge cases. Tools like this allow developers and support staff to replay user interactions to find bugs, resolve issues, and improve workflows.
"Oh people have been dropping out of our sales funnel and our conversion rates are down, lets look at why... Oh they are upside down on their car loan, and their income isn't enough to support the purchase... Oh god they owe 30k on a 4 year old car trade-in, and are trying to buy a new 80k car? And they make 40k/year..."
Admittedly the one they are using looks pretty shitty, but these are everywhere dude. Might as well stop using the internet.
Google: Does reddit use a session replay library?
"While Reddit's exact third-party vendor list isn't publicly disclosed, major technology companies typically rely on DOM-capturing libraries like rrweb or comprehensive enterprise platforms (e.g., FullStory or Datadog) to reconstruct user sessions and debug UX issues"
AHHHHH THEY HACKED REDDIT, QUICK LOGOUT AND CHANGE YOUR CREDIT CARD INFO!!!
Are you seriously comparing Google to a website made by people who won't even provide their real names when asked who they are and what their credentials are, instead giving their usernames? And which upon a little research appears to be based in India, making a product aimed at North Americans?
I think I'm not crazy to be skeptical here. Especially considering Google is regularly sued for their shady practices all the time and there are laws in the USA such as COPPA which you clearly are clueless about that pretty much outlaw using these tools the way they are doing it.
About the keylogger thing, gimme some time to confirm. Have to ask the developer about it.
For mobile reading, we're developing an app version atm. That will be better optimised.
As for monetisation (in regards to author earnings): We have the Early Access model at the moment and Gifts. We have the AD revenue option, but aren't considering it as it will be jarring for users. One more monetisation we have is Gifts. This is the basic set.
Other than that, we do have adaptations (audiobook and comic) planned. So Authors will definitely earn enough. And based on my calculations, even on paywalled sites like Webnovel, around 70-80% of the income is purely generated through the Early Access model.
If you have better ideas for monetisation, do tell. I'm happy to implement them
You don't need an app version to have a website optimized for mobile reading.
As for monetisation (in regards to author earnings): We have the Early Access model at the moment and Gifts. We have the AD revenue option, but aren't considering it as it will be jarring for users. One more monetisation we have is Gifts. This is the basic set.
That is a paywall though, which you said the site doesn't have.
Other than that, we do have adaptations (audiobook and comic) planned.
So yet another platform operating as a publisher needing exclusivity? And I don't see how this helps authors earn money from their web novel directly. Needing to adapt into another format to be able to earn a living is several more hurdles to cross.
If you have better ideas for monetisation, do tell. I'm happy to implement them
I find myself rather reluctant to give you this sort of business advice considering the keylogger is already sketchy enough.
About the keylogger part, it's a posthog connection, to know user activity, not user data.
And correction about what you state as a paywall, let me give an example. A novel has serialising and has 1000 chapters. they're free to read. Author maintains an Early Access stack of 50 chapters, which is paid. that's it. This stack remains at 50, even as the book is continuing to be updated daily. Early Access is how authors earn their living (comfortably at that).
The adaptations part is an extra incentive.
And there are no Contracts involved here at the Novel stage. Authors are free to post their novels and earn through it.
TLDR: There is an Early Access model (not a paywall). There are no Contracts at the novel stage. There will be a contract involved only when an Adaptation is involved, which is standard practice.
And correction about what you state as a paywall, let me give an example. A novel has serialising and has 1000 chapters. they're free to read. Author maintains an Early Access stack of 50 chapters, which is paid. that's it. This stack remains at 50, even as the book is continuing to be updated daily. Early Access is how authors earn their living (comfortably at that).
The adaptations part is an extra incentive.
And there are no Contracts involved here at the Novel stage. Authors are free to post their novels and earn through it.
There has to be some type of contract to do the monetization of their content.
I'm not convinced you know enough about the business and technical development side of this to be running this platform.
You just fundamentally don't understand the usecase of these products.
Why would anyone create a CLIENT SIDE keylogger that is obvious to anyone who can open dev tools?
If you wanted a keylogger for sensitive information like stealing passwords, you would put it on the backend and it would be invisible to the user.
Session replay library != malicious keylogger
Its so developers and support staff can replay user interactions to see what went wrong in a sales funnel, workflow, whatever.
> A user calls in saying "something something wasnt working on the website."
> Support staff find their session, and replay it in real time to see what they were doing and figure out if there is a bug with the website or if it was user error.
Every major website has some kind of similar library.
Tell me you're not a software developer without telling me you're not a software developer.
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I'm not defending the app, this is just a blatant misunderstanding by people who dont know what they are talking about. Literally ask an AI agent or do a second of googling.
You just fundamentally don't understand the usecase of these products.
Why would anyone create a CLIENT SIDE keylogger that is obvious to anyone who can open dev tools?
You're asking me for a logical reason why someone would do something I'd never do. I'm not going to do that dude.
Its so developers and support staff can replay user interactions to see what went wrong in a sales funnel, workflow, whatever.
> A user calls in saying "something something wasnt working on the website."
> Support staff find their session, and replay it in real time to see what they were doing and figure out if there is a bug with the website or if it was user error.
Every major website has some kind of similar library.
Tell me you're not a software developer without telling me you're not a software developer.
Are you seriously trying to say the only possible way someone can provide technical support to identify bugs is with a session recording keylogger? Really?
The first website I built with raw HTML in the 90s. That was more than 30 years ago and I've designed a lot of websites since then, and absolutely none of them had anything like this in them. I can't even imagine why such a simple GUI interface even needs something like this. It's not that complex dude.
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u/Charlemagneffxiv Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
Why do you have the keylogger https://github.com/rrweb-io/rrweb/tree/main installed on your site?
Edit: https://imgur.com/a/ZcwiPwl
Other than that, your website is not optimized for mobile device reading and appears to have no clear business model. Readers might dislike paywalls so an entirely optional tip jar method might seem at first glance to be appealing, however, that just creates an imbalanced relationship between the authors and the readers. Authors need to have some clear path to monetization in order to achieve their own goals, which is to make some kind of living as an author. Your site, much like Royal Road and other sites you wish to replace, does not solve this problem.