dw_suggestions | Subscribe to Journal and Feeds Anonymously

Entry tags:

Subscribe to Journal and Feeds Anonymously

Title:
Subscribe to Journal and Feeds Anonymously

Area:
subscribe, feeds, privacy, anonymity

Summary:
Have the option to anonymously subscribe to a journal or feed.

Description:
Subscriptions are visible from both the subscriber and the subscribee's profiles. Some feeds or communities could have topics that are sensitive or controversial.

Libraries do not give out a patron's reading list (unless requested under provisions of law), and I think DW should have this option regarding our reading circle subscriptions as well.

Poll #6498 Subscribe to Journal and Feeds Anonymously

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 67

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This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
10 (14.9%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (4.5%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
46 (68.7%)

(I have no opinion)
4 (6.0%)

(Other: please comment)
4 (6.0%)

Edit to add:

OK, can I make some edits to my original suggestion?

The owners of the journals/community should definitely be able see their subscribers. Seeing some of the concerns here, full anonymity is a bad idea.

How about something on the scale of how comments are done? So that you can select who can see which journals/communities you've subscribed to/subscribed to you in the profile: everyone, registered accounts, access lists, nobody. You will always know, and you get the decide how much you want to share in your profile.

For communities, I've just always wondered why the readership is visible to anyone who happens to see the profile? Waaaaaay back in the days of Yahoo!Groups (I am dating myself!), you could set it up so that you can't see the people in the group until you joined. I understand the social aspect of DW, but for some communities with sensitive topics, I think the ability to have granular layers of privacy for its membership would be nice.

But yeah, I get that the easiest solution would be just get another account or go with an RSS reader. So there's that.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I like that for the social networking you see who subscribes or how many are interested in your comm. If someone doesn't want to be networked they can always just use a feedreader for the public entries and not appear to subscribe.

*nod* Or better yet, since it appears the OP has already successfully hidden on their profile which communities they are a member of/have posting access to - track the community instead, and remove them from their subscription list. This would let them see non-public entries for that community, while keeping their membership in said community somewhat harder to discover for a random passerby.

It is a little inconvenient for the reader to not be able to see these subscriptions on their reading page, but to me, this strikes the best balance for the community as a whole, especially in being able to discover, "Hey, communities *exist* for discussing this interest? Awesome!"

And feeds-on-DW can be tracked, too, and thus are another thing that could be unsubscribed from so as to not show up on the OP's profile. A full inbox of the stuff you don't want others to know about you reading!

Edited (forgot about the "feeds" part) 2011-04-05 13:20 (UTC)

This is what I use for anything I don't want to subscribe to publicly. Are there any use-cases this doesn't cover?

If this was implemented, I would want the full subscribers' list to be visible to the community's owner. (Also, to truly be private, the subscriber would have to use a default reading filter that filtered out the private feeds and use a private filter to read them, because standard reading pages are publicly visible.)

I don't have active opposition to this, but right now it's fairly common practice to make secondary accounts in order to read things you don't want linked to your primary one, and that really seems just as simple as implementing this suggestion.

I agree, the full subscribers' list should always be visible to the community or journal owner. (What can I say? I have an ex)

Agreed.

The concept's come up before, with many small variations, and the majority reaction from users has so far always been "we're willing to show our readlists in order to be able to see others' readlists, because dammit I want to know where my creepy stalker ex is hanging out so I can avoid those places."

Anon subscriptions would be an open invitation to predators of several varieties. It would likely result in a number of communities going to mod-approved membership only, and a number of journals, esp. comms, posting lists of who subscribes to them on the profile. And potentially, semi-wanky announcements of "if you want access to my journal, you must first post a screened comment [here] telling me who has access to *your* journal."

Also, the viewable read/access list allows newcomers to a journal to know if they've got shared acquaintances--I can tell which faction(s) of fandom someone is associated with by their profile, and that gives me some additional idea what's considered polite comment behavior in that journal. If they grant access to a dozen people I consider close friends, we probably have much in common; if they grant access to four journals where I'm banned, I may not be welcome here either. On a less personal level, if they're subscribed to a cluster of fandom comms, that tells me more than their interest list about what their real focus is.

Hiding who subscribes to a journal is a *drastic* change in privacy and community dynamics. It gets brought up now & then; the best solution people have found is "if you don't want your reading habits visible, create a secret alternate account for those journals."

"we're willing to show our readlists in order to be able to see others' readlists, because dammit I want to know where my creepy stalker ex is hanging out so I can avoid those places."

This.

This.

Another good solution is to just set up a tracker for that journal or community. You'll get all posts in your inbox and they won't know you're tracking them. I use that when I want to "anonymously subscribe" to someone.

This, with emphasis on the fact that one has the option to create a secret alternate account for reading subscriptions one wants to keep private about.

+1 Thank you.

no, for this.

+1. The potential risks for someone with a stalker (who may have originated in RL, on another site, etc.; granular privacy won't necessarily help people avoid acquiring stalkers!) are higher if you've got this implemented.

A secondary account solves all of this without needing to alter the privacy settings in any way. Yes, a stalker can use a secondary account and create confusion, but once you realize who they are you can easily clean them. If they were able to join and view things but hide from you while doing so, the cleanup is not going to be so easy (maybe not possible at all). The solution in that case would logically be "leave Dreamwidth" - which kinda sucks if you are heavily socially invested here.

My stake in the feature either way = 0. I wouldn't use it, and I don't check who's-reading-this other than to see if someone I think might be interested knows about it, if then. But I think that there are very real potential problems for other users in doing it this way, and because of that I don't think it should be done.

And on a lesser level, it breaks the expectations of users already accustomed to the LiveJournal platform that Dreamwidth forked from. Breaking those expectations is often worth it for a new feature, but I don't think it is for this one.

I feel like this is already doable via tracking an entire journal or community. Though they won't show up on your reading list, you can have all those entries show up in your inbox, and that user/community will not know you are tracking them.

Tracking doesn't get you access to locked posts. There's no way to grant someone access without having the fact of that access be visible.

I tend to think this is a safety measure for the other participants in the journal/community; it's a matter of "I want to see who's in the room before I step inside." But I can see how it'd sometimes be frustrating.

Oh, I didn't think the suggestion here had anything about getting access to locked posts, just subscribing. Obviously subscribing doesn't get you access either unless you're granted access, and if one just tracks and isn't granted access, yes, one would just see public posts. *shrugs* This method works pretty well for me, and I don't find it frustrating, because I just want to see public posts anyway.

Alternate solution--there's a plan to allow multiple accounts in one login, ie that you can claim many accounts, inclduing OpenIDs, from your main account, and run them all as subsidiaries.

I believe the plan is to keep that info known only to you, so no one else knows what accounts you have.

If so, there could be an easy way to switch between reading pages of your different accounts, and thus have an account for your 'secret' reading that isn't publicly linked to you?

I vote for this solution. It seems the multiple account idea is going to make it so that the ownership of the subsidary accounts is obscures anyhow, so that seems a good way of resolving the issue.

I like this idea for communities (though the user is potentially giving him/erself away if s/he posts or comments in the community). I don't think it should be done for individual journals though; the person whose journal it is ought to be able to see who his/er subscribers are.

I don't really see what the point of this is. If it's just subscription to public posts or feeds, then you can just use an RSS reader, such as Google Reader or similar services.

If it's about subscribing to non-public content (access-locked content), then this is ineffective, because the person will still be listed on the 'access' part of the profile, or as a comm member.

OK, can I make some edits to my suggestion?

The owners of the journals/community should definitely be able see their subscribers. Seeing some of the concerns here, full anonymity is a bad idea.

How about something on the scale of how comments are done? So that you can select who can see which journals/communities you've subscribed to/subscribed to you in the profile: everyone, registered accounts, access lists, nobody. You will always know, and you get the decide how much you want to share in your profile.

For communities, I've just always wondered why the readership is visible to anyone who happens to see the profile? Waaaaaay back in the days of Yahoo!Groups (I dating myself!), you could set it up so that you can't see the people in the group until you joined. I understand the social aspect of DW, but for some communities with sensitive topics, I think the ability to have granular layers of privacy for its membership would be nice.

But yeah, I get that the easiest solution would be just get another account or go with an RSS reader. So there's that.

So that you can select who can see which journals/communities you've subscribed to/subscribed to you in the profile

The issue is always going to come down to: How does someone stay away from comms & journals where the creepy ex is hanging out? What advantage does the granular privacy offer, that counters the problem of making more openings for harassment?

And yeah, creepy ex could get an alternate journal--but you have the option of, if you're really worried, checking out the journal of every.single.subscriber before joining/subscribing to something--but you can't do that if people can hide their participation.

There's another issue, relating to coding rather than social dynamics: the journals you've subscribed to are visible on your read page, which is public. Are you positing that if you've got hidden subscriptions, your readlist should be hidden as well? If not, what's the advantage of hiding your subscriptions?

The issue is always going to come down to: How does someone stay away from comms & journals where the creepy ex is hanging out? What advantage does the granular privacy offer, that counters the problem of making more openings for harassment?

I get what you're saying, but conversely, isn't having granular privacy a deterrent for a would be stalker? I have no stake in either situation right now *knocks on wood* but that's the main reason my suggestion--people nosing around with nefarious intentions. To be honest, even if my suggestion is implemented, I don't know how to get around the creepy ex thing either. An username/ip black list?

There's another issue, relating to coding rather than social dynamics: the journals you've subscribed to are visible on your read page, which is public. Are you positing that if you've got hidden subscriptions, your readlist should be hidden as well? If not, what's the advantage of hiding your subscriptions?

Hmm, I have to admit I didn't think of that. If I follow my own line of thought, then yes, the granularity should apply to my readlist as well.

I wonder how easy it would be to actually implement, if someone were to fork the code to do it?

I could see a very happy social site of very privacy-minded people who agreed that the cost of not seeing the connections of everyone else was worth the benefit of not displaying one's own connections; I could see that site running on Dreamwidth code; I just don't think that Dreamwidth as a whole would embrace it.

How do you envision the username/IP blacklist working? I'm having trouble seeing how that would work, given that most residential internet users have dynamic IPs, and content that's supposed to be public-but-not-that-guy does not work in non-face-to-face situations. Face-to-face, people involved in the conversation and see that "that guy" isn't present, and speak. Online, "that guy" can log out and not be detected, or get a sockpuppet account and not reveal that it's him. From Dreamwidth's point of view, a second username from the same IP address could be the same guy, or it could be a roommate, or it could be someone in the same pool of residential IPs.

I just don't think that Dreamwidth as a whole would embrace it.

That's fair assessment, going by the polls and comments thus far. There is something to be said about having that transparency.

RE: Blacklists: I'm aware that blacklists are imperfect due to the dynamic IPs and the same situation with usernames/socks. Nonetheless, they're effective stopgaps. Spam blockers aren't perfect, but I wouldn't turn it off. This is moot now, but I could see it being used before you subscribe to a journal/community. You get a little note, 'hey, someone on your blacklist is possibly also subscribing to this journal/community, do you still want to subscribe?' It still won't be perfect, per your point above, but yay, less work.

daweaver downthread better articulates the concerns I have in mind, although I get that the culture isn't conducive to this suggestion. I had no idea about the creep ex factor before this, so this has helped me to gain a new perspective as well.

I don't think equating it to spam filtering is necessarily helpful, because of the disparity in the potential consequences of false negatives. (Granted that anyone with a known life-or-death security problem should probably be exercising hypervigilance and avoiding posting anything even vaguely smacking of personal information outside of a locked area that they control and only admit known people to.) With spam, if a filter lets through something it should not have, thirty seconds of your day is wasted, and thirty more of my day (assuming it's spam on Dreamwidth). With a creep ex, the consequences of a false negative inciting an incident are at the least a nasty half-hour, if not much worse.

Can you add that to your original post? Some people will not scroll down to see your comment.

Thanks, I've added it.

Make no mistake about it, this proposal represents a major cultural shift. The history in Dreamwidth and its ancestor sites has always been that reading / contact / friends lists were public property. It's instructive to note that this isn't always the case elsewhere - the original poster mentions Yahoo groups, and readers may recall how The Facebook once offered private profiles, visible only to approved contacts.

There is ethnographic research attesting to the way real people work around The Facebook's new environment of forced exposure. According to danah boyd, there are people who deactivate their accounts when they're not logged on, or who delete all content after a few days. There are helicopter parents, who want to control everything their child does. There are ways of inferring information about people purely from their social network, even if they post nothing about themselves. And it goes on.

My gut feeling is that the absolute best practice is to allow customers absolute control over their profile. This includes letting people hide their reading / security / friends lists from their own profile. We cannot know other people's situation, it is presumptious to assume that the social norms fit everyone, and it would be a massive win for diversity if Dreamwidth were to take a lead in this area. Lest we forget, anonymous posting is turned off for this post. Those who do not feel safe on Dreamwidth are being excluded from this discussion.

That said, control of a customer's own profile need not extend to control over other profiles. It is perfectly possible to say that if a contact displays their "is read by" or "has access to" list, that is the contact's decision. It is possible to say that if a community wishes to display its members list, then it displays its members list. The customer's decision to suppress their own profile data need not ripple through elsewhere. But it can, if Dreamwidth as a whole agrees.

My response in a nutshell: allow customers to suppress their own reading / security / feed lists, and encourage a wider discussion about whether customers should be allowed to not appear in others' lists.

I do find it fascinating that many contributors upthread are happy to take long-winded steps to evade detection - subscribing to this, creating second and third accounts like that - but aren't going to question the cultural norm. The techniques work for power users and people who know what they're doing, but I suggest that Dreamwidth will lose out by requiring its customers to understand a manual more complex and esoteric than the Gnostic Texts.

Thank you for sharing the links to that blog, it reads better than the social media evangelists and the news sensationalists, I'll definitely be following. In any case, your words express my concerns better than mine. I found it odd that we could have that granular privacy with certain elements of our profile but not others, though others have pointed out the advantages of public subscriptions. I just would have liked it to err on the side of individual choice.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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