7 ms·

Why I hate read receipts

59 points by shawndumas 13y ago

typpo 13y ago
There are partial solutions to the problem of FB read receipts. You can block the endpoint that the Facebook client sends the receipt to. I wrote a simple Chrome extension (11 LOC) for this: https://github.com/typpo/fb-unsee https://github.com/typpo/fb-unsee There is a more full-featured extension too: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-unseen/ihcedcpmfdpjijiamkaeaefgfagnnpei?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-unseen/ihcedcpm...
- synchronise 13y ago
  Is there a Firefox plugin that will do the same?
  - pliny 13y ago
    You could probably paste the code into greasemonkey without any changes.
    - synchronise 13y ago
      Well, could someone make a Greasemonkey script for this? I'd do it myself, but I'm not familiar with scripting extensions.
claudius 13y ago
While it is of course perfectly fine to hate read receipts, I don’t see how this is a problem created by read receipts. Before you had little green/yellow/red icons next to your emails and text messages, you were just as sure that your message had been received after a while, simply because emails/letters/texts don’t get lost – unless there actually has been a problem (i.e. a spam folder or a broken connection while chatting or…). I am personally much happier with a ‘read, but not replied to’ message than with a ‘possibly read, definitely not replied to, did they even get a chance to see that?’ message. IOW, can someone rephrase the problem the author has and that is apparently created by read receipts such that I can understand it?
- icesoldier 13y ago
  Author believes the assumed social imposition of reading a message without replying is worse than the benefit of understanding whether the receiving connection is open. They also make a statement that iOS turns on read-receipts in iMessage by default now, and I'm not sure when that was started, since I had to turn mine on explicitly.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
terabytest 13y ago
I think read receipts are a terrible UI concept in some of the interfaces we have to deal with daily. Taking for example a chat (like Facebook's), if you have to respond to someone's message but you don't really feel like responding as soon as you receive it, you'll be forced to do it as soon as you realize that the other person knows you've seen it and they might think you're pretending you haven't seen it. It's extremely annoying when you're trying to get work done and you have someone sending you a message. You want to answer, just not right now, but you can't, otherwise the other person might become upset or annoyed.
mannkind 13y ago
But ... the social imposition! Christ, what a socially awkward penguin the author must be. Here's a tip: You don't need to respond to a message just because someone can see that you've read it. Full stop. Email, SMS/iMessage, Instant Message are all inherently asynchronous communication methods. Where applicable presence, read receipts, and typing notifications serve to provide metadata about the conversation. Without them you get other pointless communications -- "Did you get my text?", "Did you see my email?", "Hey, are you busy? Hello? Are you there?", "I'm not sure if you're getting these... I'm going to call you." They key take away here is that the author can no longer blatantly ignore people by pretending that he/she did not receive the messages.
bherms 13y ago
I love them: Why? Because if I don't reply to someone, it's because I'm either too busy or intentionally ignoring them and if it's the latter, I WANT them to know they're being ignored.
- yid 13y ago
  How does the other person differentiate between the two cases?
  - dylangs1030 13y ago
    Theoretically, they shouldn't have to. If he's too busy, he probably didn't open it in the first place, leaving only one option. In practice, however, I find people can usually tell via context that they're being ignored. There are some subjects you'd expect this or see it coming before other, more benign ones.
    - bherms 13y ago
      Exactly... People who are being ignored usually have reason to be. If you're too dim to realize I'm just busy, then I probably don't want to be texting you anyway. If you're in a situation where I might be ignoring you because you did something to perturb me, I'd rather you assume I'm ignoring you, because then it'll drive the point home.
dylangs1030 13y ago
This is incredibly hyperbolic...there's no such thing as a compulsory reply. It's not your responsibility if someone reacts badly and gets upset because you don't want to respond; they need to deal with it. Period. Read receipts really aren't this serious. They don't even warrant an entire article about the sociological implications of their implementation. It just says the other person got it, and read it. That's it. No mandates follow. Just have the personal fortitude to not respond when you don't want to respond, that should be second nature before you engage in social communication. It's really not a big deal to ignore people. You shouldn't be afraid to just because of what they'll think. It's not your problem - it wasn't before this technology, and it won't be after the next innovation.
- egypturnash 13y ago
  If someone gets upset AT YOU because they know you saw their message and haven't replied, then YOU need to deal with them being upset. Some people will throw giant shit fits over being ignored, so it's either interrupt your train of thought to respond RIGHT NOW before they explode at you (and possibly all over your social circles; this happened to a friend of a friend just this past week), or deal with them spraying their need for a response allll over.
  - dylangs1030 13y ago
    I don't agree. If someone got angry at me for ignoring them, I'd be very transparent about the fact, and then continue to ignore them. Not my responsibility. Human beings are free to continue or end social communication at any time for any reason, without being required to disclose the reason. Full stop. It's also not just an aloof principle - how often does someone who really matters message you on Facebook? You can afford to have friends and family get angry because you ignored them. It's not as if your boss will routinely ping you through informal means.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      You shouldn't assume the social dynamics of everyone else's relationships are the same as yours.
sksksk 13y ago
When I had a blackberry, and BBM was all the rage, read receipts would give me a lot of headaches. Most of the time it was fine, but I remember occasions where I'd turn data off on my phone so I could read a message without the person knowing that I'd read it.
dragonwriter 13y ago
I hate read receipts because the UI interactions which tend to make an application respond with a read receipt if it is configured to do so don't actually correspond to me having read the message; that is, they fairly consistently prove to be false positives in their advertised role. (And, if instead they are being confirmation of delivery-to-inbox, they aren't right for that role, either, since they rely on interaction that happens long after that. I can receive, see the sender of, and delete your message without sending a read receipt.) There is basically no useful information for which they are a good proxy.
fossuser 13y ago
I think the author doesn't like that with read receipts the people she's ignoring can definitively point out the fact that she's ignoring them. Before read receipts she could pretend that she didn't see it or missed it or a whole host of non-truths where it's socially unacceptable for the sender to imply anything otherwise. Now the sender knows that the author is ignoring them and (perhaps worse) the author knows that the sender knows this. I think this is why she hates read receipts and what spawned this article. On the opposite side, I like read receipts - but I also don't routinely ignore people who are messaging me.
notaddicted 13y ago
As a matter of general principle, I strenuously object to any computer I own sending out information about my behavior without my intent or permission. The only egregious offence of the read receipt is that I don't control it.
- amalcon 13y ago
  I came to say this. Ideally, my computer would do what I want and only what I want. This doesn't always work out, such as in the cases of multiple users or malware, but it's an ideal we should strive for. I classify any case of a computer that's solely mine doing something I don't want as either a bug or malware. Email clients block HTTP images for a reason. That reason is so that people can't use them to implement read receipts.
  - teddyh 13y ago
    > I came to say this. Ideally, my computer would do what I want and only what I want. This doesn't always work out, such as in the cases of multiple users or malware [...] Or Javascript. Or non-free software.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
1O0101ll100O 13y ago
Read receipts are, at least in Outlook, optional to respond to. So...I don't see a problem. People send mail asking for them because for whatever reasons they have because they want to know if you've read the email. So what? It's not terribly effective as a practice, because the recipient can just ignore them but some people want to send them anyway. Nice to have the option. Ars continues to discuss the most important topics in tech...
- calebegg 13y ago
  This is not about email. This is mostly about Facebook. Facebook has mandatory "seen" notifications.
  - 1O0101ll100O 13y ago
    I just realized this after seeing the referenced article title. Does make my response marginally off topic. I have never used Facebook or Snapchat so I had no idea they used read receipts. Does iMessage have these too? [I don't use that either]
    - calebegg 13y ago
      It does, though they're at least optional. Several of my friends don't use them.
themodelplumber 13y ago
This reminds me of a company I worked for that had a compulsory MSN Messenger log-in policy. Nobody was using it for messaging, but we were required to log in so that management could tell when we were idle/not idle. During my 2 week notice period, the head IT guy started chatting with me and mentioned that the only thing they weren't monitoring was in fact the chat messages sent via MSN Messenger. It was a beautiful two-edged sword and we had lots of fun conversations before I left.
ispolin 13y ago
From the point of view of the sender, I find read receipts psychologically calming, oddly enough. I noticed I used to attach a lot more emotion to some facebook messages and compulsively check facebook before read receipts. With read receipts, my mind seems to be satisfied with knowing my message was read and now it's up to the other person to answer when they get a chance, or not; emotionally, I seem to be fine with either outcome. I realize that most other people have a different feeling about it so I thought I'd mention it as an interesting data point.
tsm 13y ago
This is why I love having FB messages delivered via email. I get to read the content without triggering the read receipt, letting me reply that night or the next morning without possibly offending the sender. The downside is that recently Facebook's emails have been sporadic. Sometimes I get them at the same time as the actual message, sometimes I get a digest form sometimes I get nothing.
anorborg 13y ago
I think this argument is similar to the argument of general privacy. Read receipts are potentially information being transmitted without your consent, though its metadata that _should_ have not direct effect on you. The same could be said for the NSA tapping your phone. They are merely observing and therefore shouldn't be affecting anything. I.E. if you aren't doing anything wrong what do you have to worry. In the same vein, if someone sees that you read something and you don't respond, if you don't believe that to be wrong, what do you have to worry. I don't fully agree with the position, but there is something to be said about feeling comfortable with your actions regardless of how others perceive them.
wjamesg 13y ago
I prefer iMessage's "Delivered" notification and find it serves a nice balance between (a) confirming to me that the message was successfully received and (b) allowing the recipient privacy/flexibility.
shurcooL 13y ago
I love read receipts (of iMessage variety). They make my life easier. Notably, I don't have much to hide, and I don't let social pressure affect my behaviour much. I honestly don't mind letting people know that I've read their message, and read receipts does that automatically for me. One of the advantages is that I can go afk without having to announce it. The person will see that their messages are no longer being read. (Note that it's possible to "peek" at iMessages without them being marked as read, and that's one of the reasons I like the way Apple has done it. From what I gather, this is less so with Facebook messages.)
atesti 13y ago
I always request them for email, but never reply to them. But there is a really annoying feature in exchange server: Opening a mail via Active Sync on your phone or as I heart even over IMAP will trigger it! So sad that this cannot be stopped, unless maybe by a header filter for incoming mails
MarkMc 13y ago
There should also be a setting that says, "Enable read receipts only if the recipient does too"

59 points by shawndumas 13y ago

typpo 13y ago

There are partial solutions to the problem of FB read receipts. You can block the endpoint that the Facebook client sends the receipt to. I wrote a simple Chrome extension (11 LOC) for this: https://github.com/typpo/fb-unsee https://github.com/typpo/fb-unsee There is a more full-featured extension too: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-unseen/ihcedcpmfdpjijiamkaeaefgfagnnpei?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-unseen/ihcedcpm...

synchronise 13y ago
Is there a Firefox plugin that will do the same?
- pliny 13y ago
  You could probably paste the code into greasemonkey without any changes.
  - synchronise 13y ago
    Well, could someone make a Greasemonkey script for this? I'd do it myself, but I'm not familiar with scripting extensions.

claudius 13y ago

While it is of course perfectly fine to hate read receipts, I don’t see how this is a problem created by read receipts. Before you had little green/yellow/red icons next to your emails and text messages, you were just as sure that your message had been received after a while, simply because emails/letters/texts don’t get lost – unless there actually has been a problem (i.e. a spam folder or a broken connection while chatting or…). I am personally much happier with a ‘read, but not replied to’ message than with a ‘possibly read, definitely not replied to, did they even get a chance to see that?’ message. IOW, can someone rephrase the problem the author has and that is apparently created by read receipts such that I can understand it?

icesoldier 13y ago
Author believes the assumed social imposition of reading a message without replying is worse than the benefit of understanding whether the receiving connection is open. They also make a statement that iOS turns on read-receipts in iMessage by default now, and I'm not sure when that was started, since I had to turn mine on explicitly.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

terabytest 13y ago

I think read receipts are a terrible UI concept in some of the interfaces we have to deal with daily. Taking for example a chat (like Facebook's), if you have to respond to someone's message but you don't really feel like responding as soon as you receive it, you'll be forced to do it as soon as you realize that the other person knows you've seen it and they might think you're pretending you haven't seen it. It's extremely annoying when you're trying to get work done and you have someone sending you a message. You want to answer, just not right now, but you can't, otherwise the other person might become upset or annoyed.

mannkind 13y ago

But ... the social imposition! Christ, what a socially awkward penguin the author must be. Here's a tip: You don't need to respond to a message just because someone can see that you've read it. Full stop. Email, SMS/iMessage, Instant Message are all inherently asynchronous communication methods. Where applicable presence, read receipts, and typing notifications serve to provide metadata about the conversation. Without them you get other pointless communications -- "Did you get my text?", "Did you see my email?", "Hey, are you busy? Hello? Are you there?", "I'm not sure if you're getting these... I'm going to call you." They key take away here is that the author can no longer blatantly ignore people by pretending that he/she did not receive the messages.

bherms 13y ago

I love them: Why? Because if I don't reply to someone, it's because I'm either too busy or intentionally ignoring them and if it's the latter, I WANT them to know they're being ignored.

yid 13y ago
How does the other person differentiate between the two cases?
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  Theoretically, they shouldn't have to. If he's too busy, he probably didn't open it in the first place, leaving only one option. In practice, however, I find people can usually tell via context that they're being ignored. There are some subjects you'd expect this or see it coming before other, more benign ones.
  - bherms 13y ago
    Exactly... People who are being ignored usually have reason to be. If you're too dim to realize I'm just busy, then I probably don't want to be texting you anyway. If you're in a situation where I might be ignoring you because you did something to perturb me, I'd rather you assume I'm ignoring you, because then it'll drive the point home.

dylangs1030 13y ago

This is incredibly hyperbolic...there's no such thing as a compulsory reply. It's not your responsibility if someone reacts badly and gets upset because you don't want to respond; they need to deal with it. Period. Read receipts really aren't this serious. They don't even warrant an entire article about the sociological implications of their implementation. It just says the other person got it, and read it. That's it. No mandates follow. Just have the personal fortitude to not respond when you don't want to respond, that should be second nature before you engage in social communication. It's really not a big deal to ignore people. You shouldn't be afraid to just because of what they'll think. It's not your problem - it wasn't before this technology, and it won't be after the next innovation.

egypturnash 13y ago
If someone gets upset AT YOU because they know you saw their message and haven't replied, then YOU need to deal with them being upset. Some people will throw giant shit fits over being ignored, so it's either interrupt your train of thought to respond RIGHT NOW before they explode at you (and possibly all over your social circles; this happened to a friend of a friend just this past week), or deal with them spraying their need for a response allll over.
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  I don't agree. If someone got angry at me for ignoring them, I'd be very transparent about the fact, and then continue to ignore them. Not my responsibility. Human beings are free to continue or end social communication at any time for any reason, without being required to disclose the reason. Full stop. It's also not just an aloof principle - how often does someone who really matters message you on Facebook? You can afford to have friends and family get angry because you ignored them. It's not as if your boss will routinely ping you through informal means.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    You shouldn't assume the social dynamics of everyone else's relationships are the same as yours.

sksksk 13y ago

When I had a blackberry, and BBM was all the rage, read receipts would give me a lot of headaches. Most of the time it was fine, but I remember occasions where I'd turn data off on my phone so I could read a message without the person knowing that I'd read it.

dragonwriter 13y ago

I hate read receipts because the UI interactions which tend to make an application respond with a read receipt if it is configured to do so don't actually correspond to me having read the message; that is, they fairly consistently prove to be false positives in their advertised role. (And, if instead they are being confirmation of delivery-to-inbox, they aren't right for that role, either, since they rely on interaction that happens long after that. I can receive, see the sender of, and delete your message without sending a read receipt.) There is basically no useful information for which they are a good proxy.

fossuser 13y ago

I think the author doesn't like that with read receipts the people she's ignoring can definitively point out the fact that she's ignoring them. Before read receipts she could pretend that she didn't see it or missed it or a whole host of non-truths where it's socially unacceptable for the sender to imply anything otherwise. Now the sender knows that the author is ignoring them and (perhaps worse) the author knows that the sender knows this. I think this is why she hates read receipts and what spawned this article. On the opposite side, I like read receipts - but I also don't routinely ignore people who are messaging me.

notaddicted 13y ago

As a matter of general principle, I strenuously object to any computer I own sending out information about my behavior without my intent or permission. The only egregious offence of the read receipt is that I don't control it.

amalcon 13y ago
I came to say this. Ideally, my computer would do what I want and only what I want. This doesn't always work out, such as in the cases of multiple users or malware, but it's an ideal we should strive for. I classify any case of a computer that's solely mine doing something I don't want as either a bug or malware. Email clients block HTTP images for a reason. That reason is so that people can't use them to implement read receipts.
- teddyh 13y ago
  > I came to say this. Ideally, my computer would do what I want and only what I want. This doesn't always work out, such as in the cases of multiple users or malware [...] Or Javascript. Or non-free software.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

1O0101ll100O 13y ago

Read receipts are, at least in Outlook, optional to respond to. So...I don't see a problem. People send mail asking for them because for whatever reasons they have because they want to know if you've read the email. So what? It's not terribly effective as a practice, because the recipient can just ignore them but some people want to send them anyway. Nice to have the option. Ars continues to discuss the most important topics in tech...

calebegg 13y ago
This is not about email. This is mostly about Facebook. Facebook has mandatory "seen" notifications.
- 1O0101ll100O 13y ago
  I just realized this after seeing the referenced article title. Does make my response marginally off topic. I have never used Facebook or Snapchat so I had no idea they used read receipts. Does iMessage have these too? [I don't use that either]
  - calebegg 13y ago
    It does, though they're at least optional. Several of my friends don't use them.

themodelplumber 13y ago

This reminds me of a company I worked for that had a compulsory MSN Messenger log-in policy. Nobody was using it for messaging, but we were required to log in so that management could tell when we were idle/not idle. During my 2 week notice period, the head IT guy started chatting with me and mentioned that the only thing they weren't monitoring was in fact the chat messages sent via MSN Messenger. It was a beautiful two-edged sword and we had lots of fun conversations before I left.

ispolin 13y ago

From the point of view of the sender, I find read receipts psychologically calming, oddly enough. I noticed I used to attach a lot more emotion to some facebook messages and compulsively check facebook before read receipts. With read receipts, my mind seems to be satisfied with knowing my message was read and now it's up to the other person to answer when they get a chance, or not; emotionally, I seem to be fine with either outcome. I realize that most other people have a different feeling about it so I thought I'd mention it as an interesting data point.

tsm 13y ago

This is why I love having FB messages delivered via email. I get to read the content without triggering the read receipt, letting me reply that night or the next morning without possibly offending the sender. The downside is that recently Facebook's emails have been sporadic. Sometimes I get them at the same time as the actual message, sometimes I get a digest form sometimes I get nothing.

anorborg 13y ago

I think this argument is similar to the argument of general privacy. Read receipts are potentially information being transmitted without your consent, though its metadata that _should_ have not direct effect on you. The same could be said for the NSA tapping your phone. They are merely observing and therefore shouldn't be affecting anything. I.E. if you aren't doing anything wrong what do you have to worry. In the same vein, if someone sees that you read something and you don't respond, if you don't believe that to be wrong, what do you have to worry. I don't fully agree with the position, but there is something to be said about feeling comfortable with your actions regardless of how others perceive them.

wjamesg 13y ago

I prefer iMessage's "Delivered" notification and find it serves a nice balance between (a) confirming to me that the message was successfully received and (b) allowing the recipient privacy/flexibility.

shurcooL 13y ago

I love read receipts (of iMessage variety). They make my life easier. Notably, I don't have much to hide, and I don't let social pressure affect my behaviour much. I honestly don't mind letting people know that I've read their message, and read receipts does that automatically for me. One of the advantages is that I can go afk without having to announce it. The person will see that their messages are no longer being read. (Note that it's possible to "peek" at iMessages without them being marked as read, and that's one of the reasons I like the way Apple has done it. From what I gather, this is less so with Facebook messages.)

atesti 13y ago

I always request them for email, but never reply to them. But there is a really annoying feature in exchange server: Opening a mail via Active Sync on your phone or as I heart even over IMAP will trigger it! So sad that this cannot be stopped, unless maybe by a header filter for incoming mails

MarkMc 13y ago

There should also be a setting that says, "Enable read receipts only if the recipient does too"