August 18: Censoring Updates

I'm not too sure how to feel about that. I'm glad you guys want the best environment possible for listeners and members, yet not knowing what the censored phrases are makes everything a little confusing.

Also, I noticed the way to censor messages changed - earlier, when sending a "wrong" message, a big red box popped in the 1-1 mentioning the fact we said something inappropriate and to rephrase it. Now, the message which is supposed to be censored is shown in the 1-1 list of the recipient, but not in the actual conversation.

I would be thankful if someone clarified those concerns.

@Shine16 Thanks for your post & question.

For confidentiality reasons, we are not able to share what is on the censor list. But I can tell you that it is a list of phrases which should never be used in a chat with a listener. They're context is hurtful and/or abusive always. Additionally, we censor for social media and personal information sharing. These are the items you can expect. If you are chatting in a professional, appropriate way, you have nothing to worry about :)

It is entirely impossible for any word or phrase to always be hurtful/abusive.

What, exactly, does the censorship list have to do with confidentiality?

The idea is that tools used to prevent or protect against undesirable behavior are less effective if all their details and nuances are shared rather than kept in confidence.

we are not able to share what is on the censor list.

Wait, so the censored word list is....censored ?

We've traced the source of the curse words. They're coming from your censor list!

#scaryhorrormoviemusic

Thank you for your post. Many good listeners are gone. I just sent this to 7 Cups and wanted to share: "In an effort to make 7 Cups a safe place, you are moving towards making it an ineffective forum. Maybe I will get banned for having this opinion but, if I want to talk to an automaton, I will use Siri. Dont get too overzealous with the censorship algorithms - you will further frustrate and isolate those in need rather than discourage those who may seek to exploit vulnerability. The opportunity for honesty is what makes 7 Cups unique. This seems like an overreaction."

I appreciate you Laura for the intentions.

7cups was a place where I had found relief in my initial situations but as the conversations progress; I

@Laura What would those phrases that are censored be? I agree with @Shine16 that it would be easier if we knew so we can avoid those phrases

@n0thing14 thanks for your note!

As mentioned, we are not able to share the specific list with the community. But I don't think you have anything to worry about. If you are acting in a professional, kind way, you will never have a problem :)

@Laura I dislike this statement. If someone has a problem expressing themselves due to the censor, you think it's not possible they are acting in a professional, kind way? Is it not possible those acting in a professional, kind way may still run into problems with the censor?

I'm also curious to hear a list of words and phrases that should never be used in a profession that utilizes support sessions. There are a vast number of professions that offer support. One may need to quote someone who wasn't acting in a kind way. I've noticed the censor picks up some medical terms. I don't see how anyone could accurately compile such a list.

From Wikipedia: Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints, by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.

Censorship definitely involves suppression of a viewpoint without "critical evaluation", while also "isolating [ the community ] from outside influence". How is this policy not groupthink ?

@MishaMisha

because the censorship discussed in this thread takes place in private listening chats and has nothing to do with what can and cannot be discussed here.

@n0thing14 thanks for your note!

"As mentioned, we are not able to share the specific list with the community. But I don't think you have anything to worry about. If you are acting in a professional, kind way, you will never have a problem :)"

That statement reflects the closed mind of the censor. Are you suggesting that by trying to bring information in from a rape crisis website (which the censor rejected), I was acting unprofessionally and unkindly? That is insulting to me and to all those who volunteer here.

I find it shameful how this place urges the members and guests to feel safe and share everything about themselves to a listener who will not open up in return. I think this place is a joke, if people need real help they will see a Therapist, they come here to be social and just talk to people, being judged all the time makes this place miserable.

IMHO you are totally missing the point of this site. Listeners are just that, someone who listens - it's not chat time. Sometimes ya just need someone to listen to you. There are other places on the site to chat, build community and talk to like minded people. And might I add there are resources a plenty for those needing therapy and listeners are able to point the person in the right direction to get help if needed. I think you get out what you put in at a site like this. I have found it very helpful, informative and supportive. I hope you will take another look around with an open mind.

No, I think practicalTangerine is right. It's alienating when listeners do nothing but repeat stock "listening" phrases like some kind of chatbot. Of course you want to focus on the member or guest, but you want to tell them a little about yourself or they won't be able to relate to you.

Those are two different issues.

One is wanting a listener to "open up" about themselves, which is not something promised or to be expected at all (if it ever happens it should be in the service of better listening).

The other is about communicating better and not with automated-sounding or stock phrases.

totally understand the reasoning behind this. my only complaint is that i tried to use the word facebook in a chat and had that censored. i was literally trying to talk about an altercation on facebook. i'm sorry, but censoring that word is really annoying. like i said, i totally get that you need to protect everyone involved in a conversation where deep emotions are being shared. but facebook is not a dirty word if not in the sentence "my facebook url is...."

That's obviously one of the newer ones, because I've used the word 'Facebook' an absolute ton on here, in much the same way as you're talking about. Cannot imagine having a coherent conversation about anything without using that word.

it was an error that was since fixed - individual words of that type were never intended to be filtered

So I have a long username, and often times in chat I have to say "You can just call me Gaya". That makes things easy and it's usually my opener in conversations. Now I can't write that anymore because the new rule thinks I am asking people to call my number. Or things like "Oh I just dropped my phone" also gets censored. It's just a bit annoying when it's not the context it's targetting for.

Also, today a member posted their actual phone number and it did not get censored. So, ugh. Need to improve this bit.

But this is an example of what I'm talking about below - there's no reasonable way to stop actions like this with censor lists. You can't compile a list of all possible combinations of numbers that might constitute a personal phone number and check against it. You could censor against posting strings of digits of lengths characteristic of phone numbers, but that would be a huge mistake (because, for instance, one might want to post the number of a crisis hotline). The only effective check against this kind of sharing is real-time moderation by a human who can recognize this as an inappropriate action (unless/until technology progresses to the point where a bot can do this well).

I haven't had any problems (yet) but sympathize deeply with the kinds of annoyances people have posted about so far. While I appreciate the sentiment behind having these lists, there's a pretty narrow range of situations for which they are truly effective. In group chat I've seen many creative evasions, and in any game of whack-a-mole between an automated censor and, say, two people determined to share personal information, or one person driven to say something inappropriate, the human(s) will win every time. So the "sweet spot" for a censor list is to have something sufficiently robust as to deter casual efforts at sharing inappropriate information, etc. without becoming unduly burdensome to ordinary talk. I hope 7 Cups will pay close attention to feedback on this and recognize that the best censor list probably is not the one that covers 100% every possibility!

In an effort to make 7 Cups a safe place, you are moving towards making it an ineffective forum. Maybe I will get banned for having this opinion but, if I want to talk to an automaton, I will use Siri. Don

OK, now I've hit a problem... I wanted to post on my feed an image I found through a NAMI web page, which I've swiped and put on imgur so you can see what it is http://i.imgur.com/T6J9ZD4.jpg

I received a cryptic "New post not recorded." recorded error message when I tried to put it on my feed. It had previewed OK for me. I was talking about this in a chatroom and that's when I figured the problem was that the .jpg was hosted on a site on the censor list (in this case tum.blr; you know to remove the period!). So I've found by trial and error a string in the censor list. Once I re-hosted the image it was fine... but what a hassle!

This is the kind of problem unhelpful error messages and a secret censor list can cause. And you can also see that just a keystroke or two can readily evade the censor if one is determined to communicate something the censor list is suppressing.

I find it endlessly ironic that the post the site worked so hard to keep me from making is, in fact, a succinct statement of one of the site's true core values!

I've got this as well

You have that error message, or you have it because of the site where something you wanted to post is hosted?

I really can't imagine how it would compromise the function or integrity of the censor list to have a failed post like that return a message like, "Content hosted on that site is not allowed" (possibly supplemented with a brief rationale, like "due to prohibition on sharing social media information"). I tried reposting the thing about 6 times and another image as well. Withholding details just made me waste my time.

A number of my favorite listeners suddenly disappeared this afternoon, how could almost 10 listeners just suddenly vanish?

I've had the experience of losing a listener suddenly, for no obvious reason, but not 10 at once! Though I think there have been occasions where listeners/moderators have been targeted by people upset with their rule enforcement in chatrooms - are there any common threads among your listeners that an incident like that might explain?

My thoughts on listener disappearances are in a post I made a few weeks ago. I had a discussion with a listener about their own ban (which they felt was unjust) recently and they were nonetheless surprisingly nonchalant about it; their take was that this is the internet, conflicts arise, sometimes people will report you justly or not, and it's no big deal. I found that strangely reassuring, but at the same time, having someone you've grown to trust go *poof* for no evident reason can be upsetting!

It feels like im talking to robots
So little comments, yet so many posts
Maybe the answers to our problems lay right before our eyes, were selfish, self centered people
get off your entitled high horse
No one is entitled to write comments? We are all entitled to write comments
This is really ridiculous. Who thought it was a good idea to censor peoples' use of words in the dictionary because you're worried about offending someone

d** is die

But seriously. this morality on the public is something you should be ashamed of.

It really is an embarrassment, and I can't believe that someone actually thought it was a good idea at some point to show your oppressive tones

Childish.

Hello, @selfconfidentAcai7734!

It sounds like you are feeling really frustrated about this censoring update and I can understand that. It feels uncomfortable and not very natural! In real life, we can say and do what we want and nothing stops us. Yes, there could be repercussions but we are still free to say what we wish.

We have defined values here at 7 Cups. I won't go into it too deeply, but feel free to check it out here. Of these it is noted that we we strive to treat one another with honor and respect. This censoring feature is to help with supporting these values. Sometimes people say some really hurtful things and with an online platform it is much easier to do this without any consequences. In person, if I said something really rude to someone while I was at work, I would be fired. It's not the same here as much of what we do is anonymous (for good reason!). For this reason, we are taking steps to protect everyone involved. Please feel free to submit your specific feedback about this to the form located here. In addition, an update was made recently to improve the censoring and cut back on needless censors. Via this form, we look forward to hearing your constructive feedback so that we can make this feature helpful to all involved.

Kind regards,

Jake

@selfconfidentAcai7734

Thank you for the feedback. We are working to tweak the list to get it perfect. Please continue to submit your comments through the form listed in this thread (or you can PM me directly to discuss).

We will be removing the word "die" from the censor list.

We want to work with the community to make this work. Thank you for your patience as we get this right!

@Laura @Heather @GlenM @Jake @Iara just tagging some people because no one has answered the concerns other people stated yet, even if this post is on the feed.

I appreciate you Laura for the intentions.

7cups was a place where I had found relief in my initial situations but as the conversations progress; I

Thanks @Shine 16, and everyone else for feedback, looks like a fix went in yesterday afternoon and things are now much better.

Hello!

Thank you all for this feedback!

I have created a form for you to submit mis-censored items & make suggestions for things that should be censored that are not.

We want to get this right, with your help!

Please use this form!

I suppose I should put this in the suggestion box - one place I think a censor list would be ultra-helpful is in member/listener names! I often see offensive words embedded in member names trolls choose to drag into chatrooms. There's no reason to allow words you can't say in chat, be part of a username!

(which in turn leads me to say... I know there exists a member suggestion box, but I can never actually find the link when I am trying to find it. It's only when I post something like this that I get someone post in reply the suggestion that I use the suggestion box and provide a link that I can actually do so! And it's very hard for me even to find my own old forum posts to extract it from those - the best I can do is search forums with my username as the search term, then scroll through the results looking for likely candidates. There's a LOT on this site but it's often hard to find what I'm looking for, in comparison with my experience in many other online forums.)