Private Messages Update

[Comprehensible]

Hey everyone!

As of today, we’ve disabled private messaging between users who are not friends or followers. This is to prevent bots from spamming lots of people at once.

You can still send private messages, but you must be a friend or follower of the recipient, or it won’t go through.

Thank you for understanding! We strive to make RPG Playground a safe, harassment-free space. This step is (unfortunately) necessary to achieve that.

Best of luck with your games!

[Marby]

Hi Comp,

Usually, after I accepted a friendship request up to now, I also always left a short private message for that member. Today I recognized, that this is not possible anymore. Are private messages totally disabled now (even between friends and followers)? That also would prevent us from share game parts and thoughts before we publish our games officially. Additionally the protected game system would not make sense anymore, because users wouldn’t be able to share credentials for their games secretly.

Marby.

[Comprehensible]

Hey Marby!

Yes. Unfortunately, the benefit of private messaging is outweighed by the risk of malicious use of the system. If you want to create a space to share codes privately, I’d recommend making a private group on the site or reaching out to the user on a different platform.

Best,
Comp

[Marby]

Hello Comp,

Thanks for your quick response! If private messages causes so much trouble, I understand this.

Sure this is an obstacle for our communication. But I also understand it would be way too much work, to completely moderate the private messages before release them for sending. Perhaps, AI could help us out in the future by scanning messages for malicious content before sending them to the recipients. That way AI could be a great assistance for bringing back functions like that which are too risky without it. Its a shame we all lose essential functions for communication just because a few users do not behave properly.

Marby.

[Comprehensible]

Hey Marby!

Yeah, that’d be fantastic. People are pretty well-behaved around here – I’m more worried about the never-ending stream of bots on the forums that the moderation filter valiantly holds at bay. This website uses WordPress as a base for the social functions and I’m not sure that sophisticated of a filter exists for WordPress PMs right now, let alone a basic filter. It’s also way harder for a filter to catch scammers in PMs than the forums since they use different strategies. I’ll keep my eyes peeled, though.

Comp

[deWiTTERS]

Unfortunately there are worst problems than spam. As you know our audience can be very young because it overlaps with Roblox and Minecraft. I recently read this article about Roblox, and was very happy that I took the decision of disabling private messages: https://thebearcave.substack.com/p/problems-at-roblox-rblx.

YouTube works perfect without private messages, and I assume our platform will also still be fun without it.

For me, the benefit of private messages is small relative to the abuse to minors that could happen. I’ll see how we can still do personal communication without it being private.

[Marby]

Yes, you’re right. This is really beyond words. For the moment, we probably have to accept that private messages unfortunately also makes abuse like this possible. Therefore, we have to accept, to lose that functionality by now. However, I still hope for the future that AI someday could help us out. It would be absolutely cool if AI could detect and stop any kind of abuse by 100% and also let such people automatically pay for their deeds. I’m sure the time will come soon. AI already is on its best way.

[Author]

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