Update!

@fiddy

It'll only be open for discussions. In the meantime, you're free to always use the sub-community!

@Emily619 what's sub community

@fairmindedSummer8911

The sub-community is the forum based around their community

@Emily619 oh ok got it👌 🙂

I enjoyed coming here for help and coming here to help others. Sharing the good and the bad. Yet the friendships I have made... I cant reach out to those people anymore and we aren't allowed to share personal info so if y'all did close the entire site there goes friendships.

I don't feel herd. I don't feel the support. I feel shut off. As if we weren't important anymore or to begin with. I am staying because I am hoping for the best. But I probably won't talk much.

Did they explain why they did what they did in the first place?@GryffindorMuggleBorn

@GryffindorMuggleBorn

I've lost contact with the only friend and support I have and now I have no reason to keep fighting.

@GryffindorMuggleBorn

I totally agree with you! 7 Cups was a pleasure to come to. Now it's like a ghost town.

@intellectualSea1208

Good luck to everyone. It was beneficial while it lasted

@GryffindorMuggleBorn

I really got benefit when 7 cups had a chat room, to my 35 and over folks much love stay positive and all the best

:(

You ran out of money, I can definitely understand that and be more accepting of the decisions. Startup life is a rough life and nothing, absolutely nothing, comes for free.

What comes to safety, Im affraid, there are unrealistic expectations. The site in general is voulnerable for people who take advantage of people with compromised guards. Further the site is vulnerable for all types of dysfunctional group behavior. This isnt specific to here, it happens online (and offline too), but the conditions surrounding this site do make the site and people here more vulnerable.

How to fix this, well, I dont see any perfect solutions. People are fundamentally different and wired differently. The best effort to find as safe as possible ways to run peer support based services is to trust in self governance of the groups. This isnt really the case currently. We can mute and report, thats all. On 1-on-1 we can block too which is the power. Im pretty sure, unfortunately, that community mods forcing unity in a robotic manner will result in erosion of culture. Its going to fix the problem by having the culture suitable only for very narrow group of people.

A suggestion, if I may. Team up with one of the big(ish) AI/ML houses. They know data and most of them know how to build web services. Let your team focus on things you actually know and understand. Let the online behavioral and service providers focus on what they do.

I really hope 7cups pulls through this. Ultimately it means I hope you, glen, will pull through this. You have my sympathies for the rocky road of startup rollercoaster. It is one to be respected no matter how things turn out. And the beauty in this sad moment is, that while letting go is the hardest thing to do, it is required for staying alive as a startup. I get that and I respect that.

good luck, much love

@lilmango these are imho opinion good points. The idea of AI/ML is a good one, and because I'm in that sector, I've thought many times about how it could operate in practise. It's a toughy though. The amount of contextual awareness necessary to try to interpret the nature of a comment is huge. Exactly the same sentence, in different contexts, could be extremely supportive, or horrendously judgemental and damaging.

One other point on that is scale. Scaling is also a real challenge, and the one factor that makes it difficult to scale in the digital domain is the need for human intervention. Once humans have to be involved, the capacity for scaling is much reduced. I think this is reflected in the reduction in non moderated chat rooms. You really do need moderation, sadly, so unless you have the resources/volunteers to police them, they need to be reduced. Yes, you could have hundreds, but there would be no moderation, some people would get burned, and 7cups stops being a place of emotional support and becomes any old chat site. I think Glen recognised this in his OP, saying there are plenty of places people can go to for that general unmoderated chatting.

@MikeMadrid please don't make a vulnerable community a playground for artificial intelligence and machine learning.

We've seen FB and other social networks doing enough damage with their ai/ml.

IMHO that's not a good thing for such communities.

@kindSoul10 I do agree with you. My point is that using AI/ML is incredibly difficult to get right for something like 7 cups. The problem is I believe that in the interactions between two or more people, who decides if the input that one person is giving is a legitimate and constructive contribution, or an attempt to damage and trigger another ? It may seem obvious to you, or to me, or to a consensus of people, but for a machine, it's very difficult indeed to get it right.

Ideally, we would police ourselves, but I guess the recent decision has shown that this is just not practical. A chat room with vulnerable people needs full time moderation and I believe that currently, only a human being can do that. Current AI technology just cannot get the contextual sensitivity anywhere near correct, and the censoring of the wrong people can have very very negative effects indeed.

@MikeMadrid sorry, I misunderstood then. Thanks for explaining. :)

@MikeMadrid It seems to me it's the other way around. Once humans can be involved, the capacity for scaling is much enhanced. Look at how Tumblr will moderate its group chats, announced yesterday. Every user will be a moderator, in effect. It's the same way we game the search engines with our crowdsourced Questions & Answers section.

The difficulty is when there's a perceived need for top-down control. Once that's embedded in the culture it's challenging to scale anything.

Charlie

@RarelyCharlie

fully agree there Charlie and that was my point too. AI/ML is then handy to spot the ones who try to rig the system. And to make the gathered data useful in a safe manner to protect privacy.

@RarelyCharlie I see your point, and it's a fair one. If you have all the people in the chat acting as moderators, then you can multiply as much as you like. I think the difference is that 7cups is necessarily a safe place, so there has to be some kind of responsibility there for what happens when someone enters a 7cups chat room and starts to experience hostility. I've seen it myself on here, just observing what's going on in a chat room, where someone opens up about a vulnerability and another member will start to mock or abuse them, and no one else pitches in. If that happens on tumblr, fine. But it should not happen on here. Sadly, the community is too easy to join, and difficult to control, to be able to demand responsible behaviour at all times.

My point though is a practical one, not a principle one. In principle I totally agree that human moderation is wonderfully scalable, and that AI can in principle do great things. It's in practice on here where I think it fails, and it explains why, I think, they have had to make the decisions they have made.

@glenm Thanks for adding more clarity to the decision. Start ups are unimaginably tough to manage, and I know that people that don't have experience of it can find it quite difficult to understand how hard it really is. Toughest part is letting people go, knowing that others too will suffer as a result.

I've thought, often, long and hard about what makes it special here. When I talk to other people about it, many are truly shocked about the nature of the service. It literally sounds too good to be true. It's like free money. The notion that a volunteer will put themselves forward to listen to other people's problems and not judge them is of such immense value that it's hard to believe it can be done, and on such a scale.

But of course, it can be done, and it is being done.

The fundamental "value proposition" is that : people can get emotional support by talking anonymously and confidentially to a volunteer whose only interest is to help. And that must be preserved. All of the variations and additional activities that are great, really do add value, but are not sustainable with current funding, must necessarily be suspended so as to not risk the survival of the core activity.

just when you thought 7cups couldn't get any creepier. now before you get to talk amongst each other in a group setting ypu must endure 1 on 1 at least 5 conversationd with at least 5 cult members. extreme vetting or a poor attempt at brainwashing? i'll let you be the judge

@reliableSpring6321 lmao roy you're taking it really hard there buddy.

@ElectrolytesSmell this latest step in the 7cups agenda happens to coincide with my society's amped up attempts at removing the first amendment, so yeah, i'm a little bent

Been here since 2014 and I'm never leaving. ❤️ I can understand all that's happening... Yes tough times do come but just wanted to let you know that this community means everything to me and I'm ready to adjust with whatever has to come, and give my best to keep this community together

@GlenM Just have more stricter rules for listeners. and stricter rules for members. Some listeners don't even reply and hence it can make the member feel that they are not being heard. some listeners are really genuine but get trashed talked by members and vice versa. I mean we are just all people here. thats why they need new rules or trainings for listeners as well

I encountered listeners who dont even affirm what you say. So I guess members must have stricter rules/respect same as listeners.

In the end we are all humans here and make mistakes.

I understand that some people break the rules, have gotten banned which may be one of the problems of this issue.

What's going on? Where are all the chat rooms? May I say you've kinda ruined the best mental health chat site around. I can only hope you go back to how it was.

Hi @GlenM

It's been a long time since we chatted and I have to say I am not at all surprised by your post, apart from the obvious financial concerns, there have been an awful lot of staff changes and not for the better I might add. This is not the 7cups I joined 5years ago Glen, I stay only for the members that need me, I wish you were back!

Lucy2

@lucy2 I can't help but wonder if the financial concerns are valid - Glassdoor lists some salaries people are making here and it's not pocket change.

Unless pocket change is well into six figures...............

All - sorry for not being clear - we are absolutely fine financially. Many people have predicted the end of 7 Cups. We work through challenges and get stronger through them. We are not turning the lights off. We had to make some changes to get back on track, but all engines are still running and will continue to run for a long time to come - hopefully for decades!

@GlenM What's going on?

@GlenM

When I mentioned financial concerns, I meant running an organisation like 7cups cost money and that is always a concern, not 'we're short of finances.'

Lucy2

@GlenM

completely fine financially but having a need to scale back and let go of people do sound like conflicting statements. Id have a rethink about the comms here. Not editing the old ones but having a think and coming out with clarity.

With much (tough) love and best wishes,

M

@lilmango

i agree, mango.

It ruins one

@GlenM Thank you so much for all you have done for so many !!! Thanks to your staff also and ll the work they do.

Not many people that I know of start up a site that covers many countries FOR FREE... I think people need to step back and remember this is a Free Site that actually has so much too offer and appreciate all You have done..

I may not agree with everything that goes on here as a Gllobal Mod but I have been a Mod on several sites and they were not as big as this one but they had their good and bad also but they did not offer all the group chatrooms they were lucky to have two and most only had 1....

Thank you for the updates and thanks for all the hard work!!

God Bless you and your family and the people on this site!!

@GlenM

Why were things allowed to get so

@GlenM

You are one of my favorite people for the tremendous work you are doing. I'm proud to be a listener here in 7 Cups of tea. I cannot thank you enough for letting all of us be a part of this beautiful journey of yours, which is all of ours now ❤ True, we are together in this and I would forever love to remain a part of 7 Cups of Tea come what may. This is an amazing platform for people who love to provide support to the needy ones selflessly. This platform connects so many people together all around the globe. People here are so kind-hearted & are always ready to provide support to each other. How can someone leave such a beautiful place? ❤ Together we help, together we grow! We all love you & may God bless you! Cheers ❤

Hshshs

I have highly appreciated the existence of this site, and I continue to support and believe in it, as long as the concept of 'compassionate listening through one-on-one chats' stays. All the other features of the site may change around this core feature, but there is no gratitude enough in me for the existence of the site.

Thank you Glen and all those who spend/have-spent their time here in a kind and selfless spirit. :)

Well if I can't access support anymore I don't see a point in sticking around, but I have nowhere else to go. I tried other sites before this one and it really was the best.

I've had at best, mixed experiences with listeners and although I did face bigots, trolls and the odd unkind person in the rooms it was nothing compared to the support I got from them (in fact, more often or not people jumped to my defence when this occured) I jumped on tonight as I just found out I could be really physically sick and needed some words of encouragement.

Where am I meant to get that from now? There's nowhere to go!