How I built a local media sharing network that hijacks captive portals

Have you ever asked yourself how your phone shows you that login page upon connecting to a public wifi? Well, I did. That question turned into an 8 month project. The idea was simple, what if strangers could share their artwork, videos, and music with people around them using nothing but a wifi connection? Not having to give their names, emails, not even setting up a password. But they still have an account, so they can delete their media or retrieve it later. And I wanted to give them a unique experience. Something that looks weird enough but still lovable. So I went with a modern matrix theme, a CRT scanlines effect, and a deterministic profile picture generator that gives each user a uniquely generated avatar tied to their id. How the captive portal works Turns out it's pretty simple. Android phones send a GET request to connectivitycheck.gstatic.com/generate_204 and expect a 204 No Content response. If the wifi has internet, Google responds with 204 and your phone knows it's connec