New conspiracy theory!! P.M.'s are being moderated now??

Unknown said:

As members, we currently don't have all the facts. I'm feeling my "membership" of this place is increasingly becoming untenable. 

I suspect that only one person - the 'community manager' - if that person exists, is qualified to reply to this and they may be on holiday until next year (if they are employed).

Good.

Public clarification from a senior member of NAS /NAS community needs to be made on this. I understand there's reduced capacity over the festive period and I hope that in the new year, not only do we get an acknowledgement but also a reply with explanation which confirms or alleviates our concerns.

I will be honest, I don't hold out much hope.

If any members receive a response from the community manger on email regarding this issue, that they would be willing to publicly share,  I'm sure all members would be grateful.  However, the fact this has been brought to public attention, needs a public response. 

As members, we currently don't have all the facts. I'm feeling my "membership" of this place is increasingly becoming untenable. 

 Gina Mod Anna Mod Rosie Mod Liz Mod  Suzanne Mod Anna Mod Eunice Mod 

Regards.

Looks like I’ve just been released 

Thanks for the info.  Sorry you are stuck......or perhaps now....unstuck?

I just sent you a PM and got this message. As you know there has been absolutely nothing controversial in our PMs, not even a sweary word. I've never encountered PM moderation on any other forum 

I Sperg said:

I got first moderated to death for posting a wholesome christmas message, then whilst trying to P.M. a forum member this little beauty pops up...

It could easily not be the case, but I wonder whether the warning message about the PMs might be inaccurate in a technical and literal sense.

In my case (explained here), the moderation of my account seems to have been triggered by me posting a new thread (which has yet to appear). A routine reply that I then posted in response to a new member was then also quarantined (and also still hasn't been approved).

It was only after both of those happening that I tried to send a very short and innocuous private message (which didn't contain any dodgy words or phrases), resulting in the same warning message as the one that you posted above. Although I can now post again, that PM also still doesn't appear in my message history.

Perhaps the PMs aren't actually / can't actually be read, but are instead just automatically also held, pending the review and release of the other content that the filters had decided to quarantine at around that same time. Just a thought.

Either way, it would be nice to know what's actually happening. 

I Sperg said:

English law often pivots around the concept of what a "reasonable man" would think or do in a situation.

I would expect that is you tried to apply the law to this situation then the judge would say something like "the people on NAS are, by their nature, vulnerable individuals so they do not qualify as a reasonable person in the eyes of the law in relation to their rights".

The law tends to look on disabled individuals as less competent unfortunately and in their well meaning way the law will try to be a nany state for us to stop us from ending up in harms way, and this will be the justification for not enforcing any right to privacy here.

I Sperg said:

My beef is not that the P.M's have oversight, on this sort of site, but that it has not been made explicitly clear

I agree - it speaks volumes and I think it can mean one of two things:

1 - they lack the motivation to tell us the facts. Maybe because the truth is unpaletable and they don't want to cause upset.

2 - they don't know or care.

They have been asked on many occasions from what I have read on here and yet no response if forthcoming. Given this I'm tending towards point 1 as the most likely.

I've not worked out how to do them yet, but nothing on the interweb is really private unless you go to extreme lengths of encryption. I suspect it's an automatic thingy looking out for certain words or phrases, but it's still annoying

Iain said:

It is only your interpritation.

English law often pivots around the concept of what a "reasonable man" would think or do in a situation. 

If messages are touted as being "Private" and a case went to court, when the judge considers what would " a reasonable man" expect  from "Private" messaging, I believe he might find mine (and a number of other peoples expections in this regard) to be "reasonable".

I know from a stint 30 years ago at a leading software company building their servers etc. that the IT staff are excessively intrusive, being told by the guy who ran the email system that the HR lady who's perfectly proportioned body had captured my attention was shoppiing for a breast reduction surgery both ruined my day and I felt was excessively intrusive.

I've always known Govt can get into anything, some hackers too, and the IT technical staff of course, but I've also always known that private messages on forums such as the alternative one to this one, are NOT usually easily avilable to the administrators etc. 

Expanding on the concept of reasonable.IS it reasonable to expect human beings to be 100% in lock step in their thinking and actions? Is that in our basic nature? If we are not going to be expected to agree about everything, then some privacy is essential to prevent constant conflict.

My beef is not that the P.M's have oversight, on this sort of site, but that it has not been made explicitly clear, (which is creepy, at best) and my argument with your position is that it requires a person who holds a different understanding of the word "privacy" to the one generally held by most english speaking people.  

Lotus said:

We are all adults with a right to privacy,

I would agree under normal circumstances, but there is no explicit contract with the company to this when we sign up for the site and we are also classed as vulnerable adults in their eyes, so are not really seen as capable adults for the purpose of safeguarding.

Andy said:

looking at the safety and security section it does say that private messages are “fully private”…

There is no definition about what "fully" means in this context so it could simply mean it is not visible to the public. The subtleties of the legal wording are important so lets look under the hood a bit:

From the link you kindly sent:

https://autism.org.uk/legal-information/privacy-notice
under the section:
What we use your personal information for

There are several categories here that I think give them a clear case for being able to access your messages:
1 - in our, or a third party’s, legitimate interests

If their legitimate interest is stopping exploitation of a vulnerable person by a predator or the planning of an insurrection of the government then they can make any number of justifications.

2 - it is necessary for the purposes of providing support

If a poster has exhibited concerning self harming behaviour and someone has been messaging them telling them to end it all then they could easily justifty an intervention by proving this.

3 - it is necessary for a purpose designed to protect the public against dishonesty, malpractice or other seriously improper behaviour

Think if somene was trying to sell "medication" that is illegal to people who have a serious issue, or were grooming someone for exploitation then these would all give grounds for such access.

The thing is there is no legal protection because of the way everything is worded, and this is entirely normal for websites such as this discussion forum.

We can think we should have a right to privacy but it doesn't take much to demonstrate that this is not the case.

For the record I neither support of condone the situation here - I'm just looking it from a factual perspective and the "norm" in the industry.

I totally agree, I sperg

I respectfully disagree, Iain. We are all adults with a right to privacy, we can choose whether to accept PMs or not, and there is the option to report people who send anything abusive - whether in the main forum or in a personal message.

looking at the safety and security section it does say that private messages are “fully private”…

but this obviously isn’t the case if private messages are being moderated. 

Ultimately we have the right to know if our private messages can be read by moderators, I don’t think that’s too much to ask for. User can then make informed decision about how they communicate through a private message. 

I Sperg said:

I had  thought that was just my own private paranoid fantasy, and that the creepy invasivesiveness still had certain agreed limits that we all understood.

As you said earlier the privacy aspect was only implied so there are no agreed limits to speak of.

I learned long ago that few things are ever truly private when it comes to being online. I'm sure there are quite a number of people with access to our private messages outside of the staff here - the software vendor and the government plus any number of hackers would have little issue in finding access to such a template based site as this.

The trick is never to write anything that you would be worried could come back to bite you, even in private messages.

Iain said:

Wake up and smell the roses. You live in a country that lacks freedom of speech in any meaningful way

I had  thought that was just my own private paranoid fantasy, and that the creepy invasivesiveness still had certain agreed limits that we all understood.

Gullible, I guess...  

I Sperg said:

The name private messages implies "privacy".

It is only your interpritation. It could also be interprited as "not public" which would put a whole different take on it.

I Sperg said:

IF private is monitored, then SURELY that should have been made EXPLICIT, especially on a forum made for Autists! 

Looking at this sites track record of keeping us informed do you really think this sort of communication is applied here?

Where the mods do respond to posts it is primarily to redirect people to the main site articles, not to engage with them in a discussion - we are an afterthought.

Wake up and smell the roses. You live in a country that lacks freedom of speech in any meaningful way and without it explicitly spelled out then it won't be applied here.

Custom and practice.

They call them "private messages".

THE VERY MOMENT I got to be admin on a forum a few years ago I immediately investigated whether I could examine peoples P.M's.just to check whether "Private" really did mean private. I was reassured to see that It did. 

The name private messages implies "privacy".

Why is this important? 

There are some views I hold legitimately, that are not hate based, but nevertheless if expressed publically can cause uproar with what appear from my perspective to be people with an axe to grind.

I don't want to upset ANYONE really, at least that's my default setting, "Do no harm" so some things I do not discuss on the public forum. Should I meet a like minded person, I perhaps DO want to talk privately about such matters, with another consenting adult, and compare notes, so I do in private secure in the knowledge that no one will get their knickers in a twist about why I voted the way I did.. Some poor moderator (who like many people here)  happens to hold very strong political views that conflict with ours reads our exchanges will end up feeling strong enmity towards me, and I will have no idea why suddenly the ban hammer keeps hitting me every five minutes. 

Private is private, public is public. IF private is monitored, then SURELY that should have been made EXPLICIT, especially on a forum made for Autists! 

Yes I agree. This place is (or has been!) a high priority for users but I don't think for the charity as a whole. For users here 'NAS' is equated with the forum, whereas, actuslly, it's a very small part of the services which are offered as a whole by the charity.

Unknown said:

one would think clear communication would be used by a site which is predominantly used by individuals who are known to have difficulty with communication.

This is one area this site is actually really poor on - I can only assume the discussion board is a low priority add-on to the charities services and is not allocated much in the way of resources to have someone communicate with us.

I've worked with a few charities over the years and most are well meaning but pretty rubbish at doing things that would be second nature to a commercial company. I guess I have low expectations for this site as a result of the experiences.