Update: We're no longer doing this. Private Messages are here to stay.
We will be removing direct/private messages from the platform starting January 9th. Please backup any important content beforehand.
We encourage you to join the Manifold Discord to keep in touch with the community: https://discord.com/invite/eHQBNBqXuh
Why are we doing this?
To fight spam.
To improve monetization. User-to-user solicitation undercuts market boosts and our other monetization initiatives.
To maintain a high quality product. Messages has never been a good product experience. And there's little reason to maintain it, when the Manifold Discord offers a superior alternative.
@Bandors Wow, what a great idea! I'm sure he never thought of that & that it totally wouldn't trade off against anything else.
@SG Yeah I agree. I'm aware that Manifold DMs aren't e2ee and there are people who could read them if they want to, I don't have much of a problem with that, but giving regular mods access to DMs would be something I'd genuinely leave the site over
Surprised this was even being considered. Somewhat concerning that deprecating such a core part of the site was on the table, but also glad you guys listened to feedback. Appreciate it!
I think there's a lot of utility in having DMs on the site, so killing them entirely would be a miss. I don't really get spam, but it's worth talking about how we could filter or reduce low-value or problematic messages if folks are getting those types of messages.
I was so happy to be rid of direct messages and now I will just have to put up with them indefinitely. Sad.
Pretty sure I was (at least part of) the impetus behind this planned deprecation. I DM'ed a number of folks I thought might be interested in our new platform. I subsequently got a warning from the mods and sent no further DM's.
Reading through the comments, it sounds like a lot of users would like to keep the feature. Would just add my voice to the chorus for what it's worth. DM'ing within the platform is probably a useful feature to maintain, perhaps with a monetization mechanism as some have suggested.
Assuming I was part of the problem, I apologize for the disruption and hope the mods find a good middle ground to continue!
Vox populi, vox dei. We've heard your feedback, and have decided to keep private messages.
With any change to the site, I've come to expect negative feedback, but I was surprised by the volume and intensity of the feedback I received for this announcement. It seems you all are having a much better experience with DMs than I am.
We will continue to explore different avenues to mitigate some of the problems I mentioned in the original post--especially spam.
One idea I'm interested in is having paid DMs (e.g. requiring users to pay X mana to DM someone who isn't following them or hasn't chatted with them before). More ideas and suggestions welcome!
@SG 5 minutes after I finished my extension! ah well, you can check it out here anyway. I'll put up a post explaining how to use it shortly
https://github.com/luvchurchill/mani-gpg
EDIT: Here's the post
https://manifold.markets/post/an-extension-to-assist-with-sortof?r=RmVyZ3VzQXJneWxs
@SG I mean, you wern't imagining it; it's true that the DM chat interface is kind of rough. But that's just not such a big deal. As long as it works, it adds tremendously to the dynamics here
Here's instructions for the now-pointless extension
https://manifold.markets/post/an-extension-to-assist-with-sortof?r=RmVyZ3VzQXJneWxs
I'll have to come up with a new rationale.
Do you trust manifold's privacy settings? they can leak your DMs anytime! use gpg, the ultimate in security solutions
Can we highlight the discord more heavily in the Manifold UI given this change? Even having it below "Forum" in the left sidebar?
@EvanDaniel I'm trying not to poke the bear, if they don't remember they have a forum they can't remove it. Although it did get a visual redesign over the last day.
I like receiving DMs and got a lot of utility out of markets that ask manifolders to DM me. Having robust blocking solutions probably fixes the problems here in a better way. My guess is that this will just force spam out into the open
I loathe "private messages" but believe it or not, I can't recall anyone ever sending me content via Manifold Messenger that was from any of the worst imaginable categories.
@SG Could you boost this post so that people, who may have overlooked it, have the chance to see it and maybe back up their messages
Also in aid of getting a more balanced view of user sentiment rather than anything else. I represent those who are largely indifferent, and or haven't been using the private message facility at all much. It does also have a bit of a lack of transparency potentially, though I doubt it in practise is. And as others have mentioned there are workarounds. Whether the decision shows good judgement is of course not for me to say.
I ran a poll : https://manifold.markets/Velaris/should-the-dm-feature-be-kept?r=VmVsYXJpcw
I understand that people may offer each other money in the DMs for mana and might ask people to trade on their markets, however, they could just as easily do it on discord, where there is no access to the discussion as proof.
Regardless, I would like to thank everyone who works on manifold for their hard work and understand that it may be necessary to remove DMs.
I have never use the Manifold direct message feature, but it is absolutely unacceptable to give users five days notice before deleting their private data, and it makes the management of Manifold seem very untrustworthy.
Just a short supportive comment because I know 90% of the motivation to comment on product updates comes from people who are displeased. I've been on the moderation side before and I get it. Moderation is a bottomless pit of resources that could otherwise be spent on moving things forward.
a lot of manifold users are not on discord or hard to find/message there. so that doesn't work as a solution.
but I get that supporting dms might not be easy
So, does anyone other than the CEO have a say here? Will there be some sort of petition, protest, or referendum? Perhaps a vote of the @mods ?
Discord notifications are much more overwhelming to me than Manifold ones, so I'm much more likely to miss DMs coming in on that platform.
Ngl really sick of having to join a Discord server for every little thing. Not a fan of this at all
@RISKBOT @crowlsyong kind if a problem that all the shareholder receipts are in the chats, I’m not a shareholder anymore but like…people might want to back those up
I would also like to announce that the platform formerly known as Manifold Love will also be deleting all Private Messages on January 9th.
I am doing this to make moderation easier. I don't want to read thousands of chats of people flirting with each other. I would prefer if they flirt in public, or via email.
do not worry, you can use your memory to remember which girls and boys you like, and message them.
unlike @SG i will not be informing my users. i am just going to drop the table.
i intend to rebuild capabilities to make it easy for people to share contact information and maybe a few canned messages, but there won't be ability to send arbitrary text.
I have used the messages feature to explain the basics of prediction markets to people I have enlisted to join Manifold. I would not recommend someone to this website if I thought we had to make discord accounts...
I don't use Discord, just to be clear. Messages has been a fine product experience, and using Discord is an inferior alternative, because would have to download and install some other crap that I'm not interested in
"Please backup any important content beforehand." How?
"To improve monetization." If that is your concern, monetize DMs. Still a bad move, but preferable.
@4fa The nicest monetization I could think of: First message each day is free, each additional one costs 1 more mana than the previous one. Mostly symbolic, but disincentivizes the worst spammers.
You could also charge 1 mana for the first message each week, and each additional one costs 10x more mana than the previous one.
I'm sure there is a good middle ground somewhere between these two extremes.
Don't you already charge mana for API comments? That could be extended.
Come on, ONE spam incident shouldn't cause this. Honestly, I'm not using Discord. I also have tons of content in DM's. I am not planning to take 250+ screenshots of each and every message. And Discord is in no way superior, as people can easily be impersonated. Bring DM Back!
I've received approximately zero spam DMs or market solicitations in the last year. All the spam I've seen was markets or comments. Perhaps remove those instead?
Here's a simple solution. Create a post titled "DMs to me" post a public key and voila.
Here's mine https://manifold.markets/post/dm-me?r=RmVyZ3VzQXJneWxs
@FergusArgyll Yes I'm sure everyone will do this to make this a meaningful alternative /s.
Though thank you for the suggestion should this change come to pass.
Of course the simplest solution is just for @SG to not remove a perfectly fine feature according to imo poor reasoning.
@FergusArgyll PGP has always been too complicated for widespread adoption. Perhaps this doesn't apply to this userbase, at least not as much. But I believe that any level of friction has the potential to massively suppress activity within a communication system.
@redcat look what I did https://manifold.markets/post/an-extension-to-assist-with-sortof?r=RmVyZ3VzQXJneWxs
I know it doesn't matter anymore but I'm proud of it and need to show it off
I believe that taking away this opportunity to connect will harm the Manifold community in the long run. The shift to Discord will only happen to a limited extent. Only a small portion of the user base will end up being active on Discord. Many interactions will simply no longer take place.
I also fundamentally don't understand how you would even want something like a Discord channel to exist alongside the actual website. Manifold isn't just a prediction market site, it's also a social media site as well. Creating channels outside of the actual website fragments the community and shifts part of it into a sphere that you cannot monetize at all. Thus, I don't understand how you can not want all interaction related to Manifold to take place directly on the platform.
If monetization is a decisive factor, it makes me doubt the monetization strategy. I think you're shooting yourselves in the foot here.
I remember back when this site didn't have private messages and it was just kinda weird and inconvenient to have to switch to another service to message people.
When people take credit from others and lose, they are to buy MANA with real money to follow the promise.
I believe this adds monetization rather than prevents it. How else could DM be related to monetization?
Discord is such a terrible app. And why go third-party when you already have a working solution?
This is bad. I'm not on the Discord app at all, and I don't plan to be; I already have way more than enough apps to live on. And I do use DMs here
@AhronMaline also, "we don't let users talk to each other, so we can monetize telling others about their markets" is a sleazy move; and proves you don't actually believe Discord is a meaningful alternative
Not a fan of this. As someone who's been locked out of their Discord for years due to no fault of their own, I see no good reason to further centralize the Internet on a handful of platforms owned by vagarious megacorps and CCP fronts.
I'm sympathetic to deleting this, but it's sort of a big loss for me because it just feels worse to reach out to people over Discord.
Like, if I'm a platinum or whatever on Manifold, I feel like that's a great way for me to connect with people who share my interests. P useful filter.
But maybe the Discord is better, I haven't really tried it. I am going to miss being able to just go "you're a really good trader, how do you do it?!"
For the record, please feel free to DM me on Discord for any reason you would have normally DMed me on Manifold. If you feel the same way and want others to know, you can reply to this comment as a signal. Hoping to reduce some of the friction of not wanting to feel intrusive!
I think this is a really bad idea. I don't trust Discord and don't want to use it. Also outside of the most active power users, most users are never going to on the Discord with their Manifold usersnames properly registered, so there will be no way to contact them privately. DMs on this site are an important tool for settling small conflicts civilly and privately. You're going to add a huge amount of unnecessary friction to social interaction within the community.
I can see how this might be a good decision. I've had issues with private messaging functionality on here before, and your stated reasons are valid.
It does strike me that the Tumbles Financial Complex couldn't have taken off like it did without on-platform-DMs. My very first loan was from @Tripping, who I approached because I perceived them as a prolific/successful trader of a niche market topic (ssbm). Even setting aside that they go by a different username on discord, contacting someone on a separate platform feels inherently more intrusive, I don't think I would have done it unless I had also already spoken to them on the discord (at least in the beginning, before I already had a thing going). These factors become even more of a barrier for the next phase where I cold DMed large numbers of users with solicitations tailored to their account details.
Obviously some of what I described is plainly undesirable lol. I like to think my widespread loan solicitation campaign was funny once, but the optimal number of Tumbleses might be close to 1, starts to feel spammy fast. But I expect some of these musings apply to other forms of community building as well. A little bit of friction goes a long way.
Overall I don't mean this as a complain-post, it does make some sense as a decision. Just some food for thought. We still have comment sections, and I've had more on-platform conversations via comments than via DMs.
How do one backup the content? Please don't tell me to screenshot every conversation manually.
NOOO, I need to pump everyone's inbox with AWS certification courses by the 9th, thanks @SG, made my life super hard
nooooooooooooo, i mean i see why, but like most people here aren't on the discord, suckkkkkks
@SG nowhere near all of them. a little friction makes an enormous difference in how willing to deal with software people are
@JohnSmithb9be yeah, I mean I like the discord and I think it’s useful for people who are super invested in Manifold and production markets and stuff but for an average user that’s just nukes the whole community experience