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> active/away status This can easily be abused for stalkerish behavior. Even read receipts in chat apps like Facebook should be able to be disabled by the user

by dheera 5y ago

> active/away status This can easily be abused for stalkerish behavior. Even read receipts in chat apps like Facebook should be able to be disabled by the user. (You can, with some JS injection, but basically that means programmers' privacy is respected and non-programmers' privacy is violated.) Also micromanagement. I once had a coworker who would "pounce" on me when my Slack status became active, instead of respecting the time I needed to code. I had to set my Slack status to always away.

afavour 5y ago
> This can easily be abused for stalkerish behavior Well, sure. Any away/active status can be used for bad things. Pretty much any form of text communication can, too. We all opt in and out of things according to our level of comfort, like with the permission prompt this API provides.
- _jal 5y ago
  Why not add an API to allow servers to request your contact information and creditworthiness? You can just opt out if you're not comfortable with it.
  - themacguffinman 5y ago
    Seems fine to me if it's opt-in just like the idle-detection API.
  - afavour 5y ago
    Why not debate the API that’s in front of us rather than make up excessive imaginary ones? (besides, payment APIs are already able to request your contact information in order to bill you and ship things to you. And guess what: pretty useful!)
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    That API already exists, and you can't opt out of it. Every one of the credit reporting agencies provides some variant of it to banks, right now. Somehow, we all sleep at night anyway.
  - Talanes 5y ago
    The first one is just Autofill. I already have that, why should I be scared of it?
  - handoflixue 5y ago
    That already exists. It's called auto-complete, and for plenty of users it knows everything necessary to make purchases.
- chris37879 5y ago
  Until you're required to accept the permission to keep your job. Tracking users to this level, even if you're paying them for work, is bad and will be abused. Is it handy? Sure. But maybe we all need to consider if we actually need to know the status of other people so much.
jrockway 5y ago
Yeah, nobody wants presence features. I think it's especially annoying on Discord, because nobody cares which anonymous subset of 1000 users is currently sleeping or awake or has their screensaver going. Most of my friends type at me while they're "offline". Uh huh. (The reason is "I'm avoiding someone", which indicates that the feature is only for evil.) Slack isn't as bothersome (it doesn't seem to try to detect "stepped away from the computer for 5 minutes", it's just "closed the app for the day" or "has the app open", which is better than Discord), but it's a feature that should totally go away. Slack's "z" indicator for "outside of work hours" is fine. I will note the irony behind switching to Slack only to have Slackbot send them a "electronic mail" when they get back online ;) If only there was some other system that could send messages to users and have them read them when they feel like it.

by dheera 5y ago

afavour 5y ago

> This can easily be abused for stalkerish behavior Well, sure. Any away/active status can be used for bad things. Pretty much any form of text communication can, too. We all opt in and out of things according to our level of comfort, like with the permission prompt this API provides.

_jal 5y ago
Why not add an API to allow servers to request your contact information and creditworthiness? You can just opt out if you're not comfortable with it.
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  Seems fine to me if it's opt-in just like the idle-detection API.
- afavour 5y ago
  Why not debate the API that’s in front of us rather than make up excessive imaginary ones? (besides, payment APIs are already able to request your contact information in order to bill you and ship things to you. And guess what: pretty useful!)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  That API already exists, and you can't opt out of it. Every one of the credit reporting agencies provides some variant of it to banks, right now. Somehow, we all sleep at night anyway.
- Talanes 5y ago
  The first one is just Autofill. I already have that, why should I be scared of it?
- handoflixue 5y ago
  That already exists. It's called auto-complete, and for plenty of users it knows everything necessary to make purchases.
chris37879 5y ago
Until you're required to accept the permission to keep your job. Tracking users to this level, even if you're paying them for work, is bad and will be abused. Is it handy? Sure. But maybe we all need to consider if we actually need to know the status of other people so much.

jrockway 5y ago

Yeah, nobody wants presence features. I think it's especially annoying on Discord, because nobody cares which anonymous subset of 1000 users is currently sleeping or awake or has their screensaver going. Most of my friends type at me while they're "offline". Uh huh. (The reason is "I'm avoiding someone", which indicates that the feature is only for evil.) Slack isn't as bothersome (it doesn't seem to try to detect "stepped away from the computer for 5 minutes", it's just "closed the app for the day" or "has the app open", which is better than Discord), but it's a feature that should totally go away. Slack's "z" indicator for "outside of work hours" is fine. I will note the irony behind switching to Slack only to have Slackbot send them a "electronic mail" when they get back online ;) If only there was some other system that could send messages to users and have them read them when they feel like it.