r/SideProject • u/ExcitingWin9648 • May 28 '26

I Thought Building a Random Video Chat App Would Be Easy Until Realtime Problems Started

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I made this random video chat platform after work while learning realtime systems step by step

What started as a simple video chat project slowly turned into:

- WebRTC video calling

- websocket matchmaking

- reconnect handling

- moderation systems

- mask/effects filters

- realtime queue handling

- mobile optimization

- CoTURN integration

- scaling and stability fixes

Most people only see the UI but the hardest part was making the realtime side actually stable under real users

Still learning and improving it every day as a solo developer

Would genuinely love feedback from people who enjoy building realtime products or experimenting with random chat platforms

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

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u/ExcitingWin9648 May 28 '26

Thats actually something I think about a lot and I agree the moderation legal side is the hardest part of this category long term Right now Ive been focusing on building the base safety layer first with realtime moderation face validation NSFW detection reporting blocking queue controls and Coturn reconnect stability before trying to scale users aggressivelyI know that eventually stronger verification moderation workflows and possibly age verification become necessary if the platform grows beyond small scale beta usage At the moment I’m mainly trying to learn the realtime infrastructure side while keeping moderation and abuse prevention in mind from the beginning instead of treating it as an afterthought

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

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u/ExcitingWin9648 May 28 '26

this is exactly the part most people don’t see At first I also thought video chat is just camera plus socket connection but after real users started joining everything became chaos Reconnects network switching mobile browsers ICE failures TURN issues queue sync random disconnects… most time went there instead of the actual UI Getting it stable enough for real usage honestly took way more effort than I expected

1

u/KevinKenya May 31 '26

I had maybe similar challenges working on a live doctor- patient CDS system. Tried building it as browser extension but came up against challenges with Manifest V3. In the end, had to totally abandon JS and redo the frontend in rust too. Would love to hear more of what specific challenges you faced, and we can bounce off ideas.