Would you consider implementing direct/private messages as an essential way for cross-user interaction?
If that is the main dealbreaker, the solution is rather trivial. Make the PM feature disabled by default and let people turn it on manually should they wish to do so, while explicitly acknowledging an appropriate warning that goes with it. If you suspect (most of) your users are in the dark about leaks, breaches and the like, educate them, all the while leaving them with the freedom of choice whom, what and when to trust. I suppose you wouldn't like somebody else making that decision for you either.
No argue there, nor was it implied otherwise. But I am starting to realise minds have already been made up and the real reasons don't seem to have anything to do with the protection of user data, otherwise the staff would readily implement full end-to-end zero-knowledge encryption and introduce the feature numerous users have requested throughout the years.
E2EE is worth a lot less than you think.
Not until such laws come to pass, especially worldwide. And even then, it won't be the kind of encryption I specifically mentioned: true end-to-end (meaning client-side encrypted/decyrpted) zero-knowledge (stored without any possibility of hoster accessing unencrypted data). A lot of services slap on E2EE label these days, but upon closer inspection you could easily see they are just misleading, if not downright deceiving their users.
These laws apply on a government level to any website that has users. If the concern is that users may use the private messaging feature to disclose truly private information to each other, then that's easily solved:
Make it part of the website's terms and condition of using the direct messaging feature that this feature is used at the user's discretion, and make a prominent statement upon its launch and on the website that this feature is not meant to be used for sharing private information, and that you won't be held legally accountable for any private information shared here.
The point of this feature is not that it allows users to share private information with each other, but that it allows users to communicate with each other directly, without the need to post their conversation public for everyone to see. It is only private in the sense that it is not a conversation out there for everyone to see. It's not private in the full sense. And this needs to be stated clearly for all users to see.
I think people get confused when the word "private" is used online. Nothing you post online is private. It's all public. The difference is only where it gets shared.
By the same logic, a letter isn't private, because it can be trivially intercepted and opened at any time along the way. Do you know what keeps your correspondence safe? Laws. But online the same principle doesn't seem to apply, because in the year 2024 people still think "digital" means "magic". Now can we please wind down this conversation that should have remained closed? Thanks.
While getting hacked and "private" data being leaked, private messages among them, I believe the more important issue with responsibility of a hoster would be, that they would have to remove hate speech, harrassment and such. They can't just have you sign a waver and be done with it. Maybe discord can get away with it. But on a regular website, if I harrass you with pm, there has to be means of the site removing the messages and banning the account. The harrassed account being able to "block" the offender is just not enough.
This just all translates to the high maintenance of such features.
So if you want to have a different wording: it would cost money to have such a feature and people would not pay for it.
Maybe discord can get away with it. But on a regular website, if I harrass you with pm, there has to be means of the site removing the messages and banning the account. The harrassed account being able to "block" the offender is just not enough.
Completely understandable from an ethical standpoint, but are they also obliged legally?
Anyway, that problem already exists within the moderation of comment sections and community forum, so essentialy it would just boil down to the question of scale, and with allow lists that should almost be a non-issue (not saying it won't happen, but significantly less frequent),
Yeah, but we already have this with the forums. Should we not have the forums either? There's virtually no difference between the two. Direct messages are not private messages. They're publically shared conversations between two or more users. They're just not made accessible to everyone online by default -- that's the only thing that makes them "private". No private information should ever be entered into these messages -- just as you wouldn't post any private information on the forums.
And if you treat them like that -- with everyone well aware that these are not really private in the full sense -- then what's the high maintenance?
You're not doing anything more than the forums. You're just allowing people to talk to each other directly, as opposed to having to post every conversation between each other for everyone to see out there.
I don't see how this is any different to having access to the forums. Why would it be a "moderation and privacy nightmare"? (See my notes below.)
Unless the current moderation for the forums is already too much of a challenge. Private messages are posts, too, as far as moderation is concerned. They can be shared with moderators when reported. And the same policies and user treatment apply for the most part. An offending user can be warned, then banned.
It's no different to using the forums. The only difference is that users can talk to each other without everyone having to ogle their posts.
Since you necroed this topic anyway, have you seen how people argue about DMs on Mastodon? Or for that matter the problems that crop up all the time on Discord? No, DMs are not the same as an open forum. There are different expectations, and different issues, precisely because DMs aren't public. Sure, you can do all that. But it can be a lot more problematic.
People (bots) will use it for spamming, spamming and more spamming. And people (real people) will harrass, be harrassed and take screenshots, exposing previously thought private information. Even with public chatting those issues arise. With pm that would escalate. It is high maintenance and itch lacks the advertisment revenue to moderate this. Even twi...x considers collecting payment or already does so, for various things - in addition to the advertisments.
Think try my game on discord scam transforming to try my game on itch private message scam.
In addition to what has been stated under the proposed solution above, scam/spam prevention could be achieved by implementing allow and block lists.
Btw, the nature of private messages is such that users themselves are responsible for moderating them, given the appropriate tools, so no additional labor on the part of Itch staff is needed, nor expected.
Private messages are not private in the sense that they only belong to you and the other person. They are private in the sense that they are not public (read: google will not index them). They are still moderatable and need to. If you get harrassed, how would you complain, if they have to keep private and no moderator could view them? Also, what I said, people do take screen shots or just repeat information you gave them there. PM is not private instant messenger system.
Did you see your proposed solutions anywhere on the net? (I am talking about a public website, not some system like discord). Also, did you see anyhwere a private message system that is disabled by default (or enabled, but can be disabled)? I am curious, how viable those solutions are. If they are, one would think, that they are used at some places.
And no, a block list will not prevent spam. Users would have to block each spammer after the fact. That is not prevention.
Itch is not an eco system designed for much online interactions between users. Look at steam for a counterexample. They even provide voice chat, friend lists and all those bells and whistles. Itch is a project hoster where you can comment on the stuff you downloaded.
While adding basically a "friend" system (allow list) and hence private messages might be desirable for some players, it would also increase maintenance. While itch is not really big, it ain't as small as a nieche interest public forum with 20 active members and half a moderator. (The public forum might look like it, but the overwhelming number of comments are on the project pages.)
Imho, itch is designed for publishers to interact with the players, not for the players to interact with each other. Whereas steam is designed for players to interact with each other and little ineraction between players and devlopers.
Also, what I said, people do take screen shots or just repeat information you gave them there.
Nothing can protect you from that, no service or technology, you wiilingly gave that info away. But are you telling me this is actually one of the reasons Itch won't implement the feature? If so, that would be a "reason" not to have any private messaging system, anywhere.
Did you see your proposed solutions anywhere on the net? (I am talking about a public website, not some system like discord). Also, did you see anyhwere a private message system that is disabled by default (or enabled, but can be disabled)? I am curious, how viable those solutions are. If they are, one would think, that they are used at some places.
Not very familiar with a lot of other services, but that takes nothing away from the potential viability of the propsed solutions. Don't see why PMs could not be disabled by default if that means they would be introduced to users who want to utilise them. Keep in mind, Itch is obviously not most of the platforms, otherwise this kind of feature request wouldn't be an issue.
And no, a block list will not prevent spam. Users would have to block each spammer after the fact. That is not prevention.
True, I should have worded that differently. I named the allow list first for that particular purpose. Block list would be a mitigation technique for users wanting to go the other route.
Imho, itch is designed for publishers to interact with the players, not for the players to interact with each other.
How about players interacting with the publishers non-publicly and publishers interacting among themselves, an example Dace posted in another comment?
it would just boil down to the question of scale
Now you get it.
, and with allow lists that should almost be a non-issue (not saying it won't happen, but significantly less frequent),
But you still do not see, that there is no such thing as private messages on a website. They have to have moderators to intervene. They are accountable, if they do not act upon reports. (Oh, and what you call allow list ist just another word for a friend request and a whole infrastructure behind it)
And while we are at it, do you propose private messages on youtube as well? Oh wait, they had such and abandoned it... ;-)
But are you telling me this is actually one of the reasons Itch won't implement the feature? If so, that would be a "reason" not to have any private messaging system, anywhere.
That was in response to your reasoning, that those messages would be "private" and hence would not need moderation and some simple features would hand wave all the issues. At least that is what I understood from you. You invoked something like that to the explanation that such messages would not be implemented "because they would be a moderation and privacy nightmare".
Just because itch is not willing or able to tackle those issues does not mean no one could. But as I said, this costs money. I see no advertisments on itch that would pay for such a service. And all those services that are "free", are services where you are the product.
Not very familiar with a lot of other services, but that takes nothing away from the potential viability of the proposed solutions.
Actually it takes away quite a lot, like most of it. In other words, while you know nothing about running a public website with users accounts and having not observed any supporting evidence for the viability of your solutions you could cite, you think you know better than the people actually running such a site. If they say there are problems that are nightmarish to solve, I tend to believe them more than you.
Bottom line, there are issues with such features. The details or wording of those issues are not really important. In the end it would just cost money to overcome those issues.
Your account is older than mine, did you never see comment sections, where people tried to scam developers? This even happened in public message board. Out in the open so to say. I shiver at the thought of the new hunting grounds the bad guys would get, if itch would implement a direct message system. Right now it has to occur in mostly public places, where not only the scammed could report, but anyone reading it could alert a moderator that something fishy is going on.
Steam has such bells and whistles, but they ask 100 bucks from wannabe developers up front and I believe they have harder sanitation for user accounts as well, And of course, they practially only have paid games or advertisement games, whereas most stuff on itch is free/pay what you want and advertisment is even frowned upon in games. I am not even advertised games on itch, unless I specifically browse for recommendations. Log into steam and you see game ads. What I am saying, they have the money. Itch does not. And implementing such features will not increase the money itch has to pay for the feature. In the long run such features might do good for a platform, but there probably would be a whole eco system needed around it. Itch does not even have public reviews or user tags.
But you still do not see, that there is no such thing as private messages on a website. They have to have moderators to intervene.
If the system is implemented properly, they are private in the sense that they are accessible only to the communicating parties until reported and even then, only the portion in question is made available to the moderators, not the whole history of everything that user(s) wrote to everybody, unlike public ones.
That was in response to your reasoning, that those messages would be "private" and hence would not need moderation and some simple features would hand wave all the issues. At least that is what I understood from you. You invoked something like that to the explanation that such messages would not be implemented "because they would be a moderation and privacy nightmare".
The part you quoted was solely in response to the screenshot issue.
and having not observed any supporting evidence for the viability of your solutions you could cite
The viability and the lack of real-world evidence was related only to the "disabled by default", not the PMs in general, not because I think this should be the new norm, but because I was informed that moderation issues were the main stumbling block. If you think this simple solution wouldn't reduce them substantialy, you are free to ignore it.
you think you know better than the people actually running such a site.
This conversation is starting to head in the wrong direction, so I will try and be very brief. Never said such a thing, unless you think that sharing ideas constitutes as "being smarter than the ones who are making this site". In that case, why does this forum section even exist?
But you still do not see, that there is no such thing as private messages on a website. They have to have moderators to intervene. They are accountable, if they do not act upon reports.
Not true. While it's true that private messages online are never really private, moderators do not actually have to read and intervene in users' private messages unless they need to determine if a website/community rule is being broken (the same as on the bulletin board). The website is legally and morally accountable only for its rules/policies.
If you give users the choice to stop receiving messages from another user, or to opt out of the messaging system altogether, then you can easily define in the user agreement that the private messaging feature is to be used at the user's own responsibility, and at their discretion/control/choice. The moderators are not to be held legally accountable for private user interaction, and the content of user messages.
You make the whole thing safe as a community for everyone by including the private messaging feature in the same moderation policy that the rest of the website is in: meaning that if a private message is reported as breaking the rules, it can be easily sent to and reviewed by the moderation team (the same as a forum post). This makes things transparent.
And, just as with the forum posts, the user risks a ban of their account for repeatedly breaking the rules, even after a warning. So they can no more abuse the private messaging feature than they can abuse posting on the forums.
The private messages actually require very little moderation. They're an extension of the bulletin board, essentially.
So long as the user has control over the feature, there's very little need to moderate.
You don't solve harassment by censoring free speech. By not including this feature, you're not just stopping users from being harassed, you're also stopping users from being able to nicely talk to each other and form friendships and affiliate relationships. It makes Itch a cold-cold, competitive commercial place, not a friendly community.
I can't send a gift to a fellow seller on Itch with a private message, for example. I can't make someone's day. And the same way, I can't receive a gift either with a nice message from someone. Or talk to someone about doing a joint promotion, or just share our experiences.
Ultimately your choice, but I thought I'd draw attention to this. I'm not the only person who feels this lack of warmth on Itch.
There are ways to create a private messaging system where the user has full control over who can contact them, and can stop unwanted users from contacting them in a private message. If you give users the control over their own private messaging life, then there's no need for moderation, really (except for following the main rules of the website/community -- the moderation that is already in place).
Sure, with more freedom comes more responsibility, and more social dynamics, but stopping people from being able to cater to their needs and express themselves is not a solution, either. You need to find a working balance -- to create a communication system that keeps users in control and safe, and that doesn't require heavy moderation, but that allows them to tend to their needs and to openly communicate with each other, even in private if they feel the need to.
What would be the harm in implementing a basic "send a private message/letter/notice" feature to a user on Itch, where they have the option to:
Uhm. Do you argue for itch to reinvent facebook? Because it sure reads like that.
This discussion is pointless. There are "solutions" offered. But there a no technological problems here. Any run of the mill out of the box message board has private messages. It is not a technical issue. You do not need to provide solutions for problems that are non existant.
It is a money problem. Again, not a technical problem to implement such features.
It is staff problem. You need people to deal with issues that grow with usage. And using the feature will not create income, since itch does not run ads on page. On a thing like facebook, the more you use their messaging features, the more advertisement revenue there is, and they can pay staff to sanitize spam, scam and harrasments. Anarchical self service protection is not enough for a legit site, not even with a disclaimer.
You should ask youtube, why they abandoned their private messaging. If they do not have the money to run such a service, what makes you think itch would?
https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/12446824?hl=en
Oh, and add imdb to that club. They kicked their whole message board out. Though I do not remember if they had private messages. You can still access it on https://moviechat.org/ , they picked that up, but there is not as much traffic as before - and of course it is ad financed.
This is not a community site in the sense you are describing it. Those still exist.
Community messaging is not the goal of itch. It is not built around it. To slap it on as an afterthought can be done for small groups where half an admin can deal with anything coming up in their spare time.
It would be different if there was a separate community forum here and you would need to make an extra account. But as it is now, the same account is used for everything. Private messages would be available for anything. To write to developers, to commentators, to random people.
I seen some ugly discussions in public comments on games. If those were be able to be held in private messaging, plus if you could PM developers, that would be that moderation nightmare, that was cited above.
Plus the spamming. They do not have enough staff to sort actual scam malware projects out. What makes you think they would have the staff to handle private messaging? The public forum here is mostly (visibly) handled by one moderator. And that moderator is not staff. Because it is a small forum, the public forum that is.
As I said, the situation might be different, if we would have to make separate accounts for public forum.
Fair enough. But from personal experience I can say that Itch loses a lot for not having this ability to privately communicate between creators/sellers, to form friendly and working relationships.
I can only compare it to DeviantArt -- which is an art gallery site, but it features both private messages and a forum, encouraging collaboration between artists.
In the old days, there were a lot of creative community sites like this: Elfwood, DeviantArt, Voice Acting Alliance... They all had private messaging, as well as forums and comments. You could contact any fellow creator on the site (on DA, the only surviving one of these big three, you still can), and help each other and form creative working relationships. I see Itch as such a site/community, too.
I understand the current restraints, I just think Itch is losing something valuable because of those restraints. Everyone is kept isolated from each other, and doing things for themselves. This limits level of creativity and creative production on the platform. But that's just my two cents. I understand what you're saying. Ultimately, it's up to the management to decide if it's worth upscaling or not, and what they want the user experience and community to be like.
Oh, it could be different, if there were certain infra structure elements. Mostly multiplayer and a unified client. Look at Steam for a feature list.
As for da, well, uhm. how do I say this
They do sport that scaling mechanic I believe is the main reason for itch to not have that feature. The more people use the social media feature, the more money comes in.