It seems like this could be useful for coordinating around dealing with bad people. But is there anything structurally to prevent it also being used to coordinate harassment, cancel culture etc.?
Also, on a more technical note, it seems like people might decide to self-accuse themselves of any possible transgressions, just to be present in the chats and get a heads up of any possible future accusations.
The problem of harassment is what the section ‘Banning, flagging and blocking’ is about. You can substitute the word “malignant actor” with “harasser”. As stated, there are some mechanisms to minimize this, but more suggestions are always appreciated. The option to self-accuse was pointed out in ‘banning, flagging and blocking’ (“people who pretend to be someone they’re not”) and ‘tagging’ (“Let’s say Barry MacBadguy only assaulted one person and now uses this site to pretend to be his own victim”). The self-accuser can see that someone else accused them, but if the victim opts to stay completely anonymous the self-accuser can’t see who accused them. The flagging and blocking mechanisms are there to punish pretenders, though without a third party verification system pretenders will still get in. Third party verification is possible, but does hamper anonymity and makes the project less scalable.
EDIT: You can’t stay completely anonymous if you use the chatroom to share experiences, but you can stay anonymous if you use it to coordinate actions (e.g. On January 6th 13:00 we post our stories to our facebook pages). Obviously after you’ve come forward you can’t stay completely anonymous, but you can’t do that with any other method either. This project will not completely protect victims, merely improve upon the current situation.
A chat like this can’t stay completely anonymous. What could you even say which would be useful and wouldn’t reveal your identity, if the abuser is there to listen?
Like most projects, it’s hard to come up with the correct solution just by thinking about it and without interviewing lots of users (or maybe checking why previous projects failed).
I personally didn’t manage to solve this one (unfortunately :( ), but it doesn’t mean you won’t
It seems like this could be useful for coordinating around dealing with bad people. But is there anything structurally to prevent it also being used to coordinate harassment, cancel culture etc.?
Also, on a more technical note, it seems like people might decide to self-accuse themselves of any possible transgressions, just to be present in the chats and get a heads up of any possible future accusations.
The problem of harassment is what the section ‘Banning, flagging and blocking’ is about. You can substitute the word “malignant actor” with “harasser”. As stated, there are some mechanisms to minimize this, but more suggestions are always appreciated.
The option to self-accuse was pointed out in ‘banning, flagging and blocking’ (“people who pretend to be someone they’re not”) and ‘tagging’ (“Let’s say Barry MacBadguy only assaulted one person and now uses this site to pretend to be his own victim”). The self-accuser can see that someone else accused them, but if the victim opts to stay completely anonymous the self-accuser can’t see who accused them. The flagging and blocking mechanisms are there to punish pretenders, though without a third party verification system pretenders will still get in. Third party verification is possible, but does hamper anonymity and makes the project less scalable.
EDIT: You can’t stay completely anonymous if you use the chatroom to share experiences, but you can stay anonymous if you use it to coordinate actions (e.g. On January 6th 13:00 we post our stories to our facebook pages). Obviously after you’ve come forward you can’t stay completely anonymous, but you can’t do that with any other method either. This project will not completely protect victims, merely improve upon the current situation.
A chat like this can’t stay completely anonymous. What could you even say which would be useful and wouldn’t reveal your identity, if the abuser is there to listen?
Don’t let the pushbacks discourage you too much.
Like most projects, it’s hard to come up with the correct solution just by thinking about it and without interviewing lots of users (or maybe checking why previous projects failed).
I personally didn’t manage to solve this one (unfortunately :( ), but it doesn’t mean you won’t