Forum Safety and the Disabling of PMs

Hey now… no need for fancy foreign words expressions man!

Kinda creepy. I am not willing to give this kind of information to admins, you’d expect a modern website with a modern design like this to at least get this one thing we’ve been doing right for decades now. If the majority of users simply don’t want their private information to be private anymore, then I guess I have no objections. We could have a poll about it I guess, the forum is crazy about those.

Off-topic so I will avoid responding.

Not really. Your point is that people shouldn’t be afraid of having their convos checked by admins since this is a language learning website. What’s the correlation? Ironically, machines and algorithms are the ones that check if our learning is correct while admins check if our PMs have something they don’t like in them.

Again, this concept is fundamentally creepy. Mommy looking under the mattress to see what kinda stuff you’re into creepy.

Except it isn’t, and again, you’re missing the point: that PMs can even be read into by a third party without your consent is wrong. The phone analogy can evolve to something even worse: this is if you bought a new galaxy phone, but to even boot it up, you have to accept an EULA that Samsung has total access to every conversation you have from every app you ever install on your phone, and you willingly accept that kinda EULA. The world is going completely mad.

Again, just another thing we’ll have to agree to disagree. That companies like Tofugu are already doing this and think it’s okay is more of a moral argument I guess, it’s certainly not okay or justifiable in any way in my book. I think it shouldn’t be a thing and that again, you should assume that the vast majority of users are not using the system to any nefarious means, and if they are, the victimized party will come out with their information of its own accord (a way of seeking justice you could say).

Telling me about this or suggesting the switch to DM’s instead of PM’s doesn’t make it right, it doesn’t fix the problem, it even makes it worse in my book, because now you don’t even need to hide it, they’re no longer PM’s so admins have all the justification in the world to read into them if they want to.

So, while the current granular discussion about how best to impliment PM/DMs here is no doubt fascinating to maybe 5 people, it appears that the train has left the station.

13 Likes

You do know that almost every app you install on your phone has acces to your messages, photo’s, and almost everything.

The thing that you are confusing a DM here with your phone that holds all your memories actually is disturbing. There is a big difference. And please stop the “oh noo my poor privacy” discussion. If you know before hand that your DM’s could be checked. Well… act accordingly. I would like to have a way to have conversations with people without bothering people on this forum.

This is not a discussion about net neutrality or the government “snooping” on your stuff and removing your privacy. This is a business who wants to keep their users safe. And at the moment this is probably the closest we are going to have to safe.

3 Likes

You said you used PMs on this site, didn’t you? There was always a “warning” at the top of every message that they will be checked out by a moderator if flagged, and that they’re thus not entirely private.

8 Likes

Doesnt mean that if people come up with safe ways to re-instate the function they should be discussed. So the team could maybe allow the DM’s as long as they are monitored.

As horrible as this situation is, I feel like addressing PMs is not a complete solution. Skip to the bottom for a tl;dr.

PMs, as I understand, are visible on the admin side of things, or should be for situations like this or harassment, etc. Though I don’t see a use for PMs, I don’t see it making things much safer while external lines of communication can be established from within WK.

One potential problem is, people can link their twitter account to WK. Twitter currently allows PMs. People using twitter as a social tool is fine but good luck getting action taken by twitter to promptly and efficiently resolve a situation like this. Twitter is also a common target for acquiring personal information but how relevant that may be is a bit of a different situation.

Also, WK is, thankfully, quite social and its not uncommon for it to be used to establish external online communities. The thought that comes to my mind, to age myself on WK, was LINE from back in the beta. That being said I have seen posts for steam communities (for pc gaming), nintendo friend codes, and I’m sure other communication hubs.

I enjoy seeing these ideas and external communities come up here as it does, as far as I know, come from a good place. However, I feel that allowing plugs to other social platforms where PMs are permitted just circumvents what might be the biggest safeguards WK can offer. The fact that you can be anonymous here and the degree of involvement possible at WK HQ go a long way toward making this a good and safe community. True anonymity or moderation coupled with personal responsibility seems to be the most sensible choices going forward, at least as far as I can see. That being said, this situation is not Elise’s fault and I do not intend to imply that with my previous statement. From my experience, WK is a good community full of an overwhelming majority of good people (I believe). Bad people will do bad things and that is not anyone’s fault but their own.

TL;DR
Bottom line, this situation is absolutely horrendous but removing PMs only shifts the communication and problem into a bigger, less easily monitored, community. I’m not asking for re-implementation of PMs; why would we need them. However, I would like to see an effort made to address the potential work-arounds if a site wide approach is to be taken. Ultimately, it will have to come down to a level of personal responsibility but if we are going to try and address the use of WK in such activities, then simply looking at PMs is not really sufficient in my opinion.

4 Likes

As a father of a 16 year old daughter, I’m glad this was shared publicly. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere and if it can happen to elise545 it can probably happen to anyone. I will be vigilant in reminding both my kids that if something doesn’t feel right, they always have their mother and father to turn to.

23 Likes

@Lowrey you have perfectly put in to words what I have been trying to say. Thank you.

Yeah, the apps you tend to install I guess. I use my phone to have very short phone calls, listen to music and rarely chat with an app which I know has end-to-end user encryption. If my phone company or carrier are still snooping on me after that, it just goes to prove my point: I have no apps that require permissions into my camera or text messages, so it’s just morally wrong to do it.

No confusions here, I know exactly where I stand. If I know there’s a chance I’m being snooped at, I simply don’t put down anything intimate or embarrassing in there (except for my crippling pineapple pizza addiction). But again, I shouldn’t have to compensate for this, I’d rather not use the PM service of a company that has this level of distrust towards me.

Not sure why you brought the government up, as far as I’m aware we’re talking about internet forums and Tofugu has no affiliations. Also, it really depends on what you consider “safe”. If server admins reading into your PMs when they deem it necessary is safe to you, that to me is not safe and will never be safe, server admins are people like any other and every person can and can not have nefarious intents.

Yeah, “if flagged”. At that point there’s a middleman which has to be triggered by either party. At that point the onus is on the users to break privacy, and if users are resorting to that method, then they’ll probably be posting the info in more places of their own accord anyway, to make their side of the story heard.

It’s far from a perfect system and can still be abused but it’s better than just having blanket access all the time.

The situation has veered off-topic a lot though, no point in discussing privacy in PM’s if the PM’s are just going to stay disabled.

It doesn’t even necessarily have to be you. They can talk to each other or to their friends.

My understanding of how this manipulation works (from stories in this thread, the inciting incident, and someone I know very well who went through a similar process) is that isolation and privacy are used before branching out into fear and more direct control.

As long as the would-be victim is talking to someone they trust constantly, they have an out, a way to not feel like they’re disclosing something shameful or even dangerous after it’s already well underway.

But, that being said, I’m an observer, male, and not a parent myself. I just know I felt something was off when this happened to someone in my life, but I had absolutely no information to relay to those who could intervene.

4 Likes

If you say so. I call doubt. In this day and age all apps ask for permission to something.
But… the thing is… the DM’s were never totally private. And there isn’t really a difference into a user flagging a message or an algorithm flagging a series of keywords. And if it is nothing that is fine. I rather have 20 false positives than one slipping through the crack in this case. If you think your privacy on a language learning tool is more important than a childs life than maybe don’t use DM’s.

If you want to have totally private conversations use encryption and what not :).
I am a big fan of privacy rights and keeping information from the government (Tin foil hat thing) but as long as it is WaniKani it is no problem :slight_smile: If you want WK to trust their users you have to trust that they wont misuse their power to keep people safe. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Actually, the reason I suggested an algorithmic approach is because there IS a difference: no admin gets automatically notified if code does it, just the user before they reply.

Between two consenting individuals, it would still be as private as the PMs were before the feature was added.

Ok, we’ve gotten far enough off-topic. I think the productive part of the conversation has pretty much run its course at this point so I’m closing the thread. If anyone has more ideas about forum safety, definitely send them to us via email (that’s hello@wanikani.com).

16 Likes