Remove a follower

Feature Requests
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47

I think it’s important to remember that the forum represents a very small minority of iNat users. This is certainly not to diminish someone’s experience with stalking in any way, but I don’t think extrapolating posts by forum users is an accurate way to determine how common stalking and harassment are. What I do think is important to take away is that it happens more than any of us would like to have it happen and that it’s something we should keep in mind. Everyone here is real person with their own experiences and views. There are trade-offs, as always, and iNat’s openness does come with unfortunate downsides when it comes to privacy.

I wouldn’t worry too much about following someone or liking posts, but keep in mind that your actions might be interpreted in a way you don’t intend.

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49

Agreed. If iNat does not have a detailed anti-harassment policy for its members then it needs one. Actions taken to address the issue should reflect a coherent, carefully considered policy based on actual data and best practice.

Actually, your actions and words will inevitably be interpreted in ways you don’t intend. There’s no way to avoid that. The flip side of that is that every one of us will interpret the words and actions of others in ways that were not intended. All languages are rife with ambiguity and imprecision and behavioural communication is even less precise. The only meaningful way to correct misunderstandings is further dialogue.

On the other hand, some of us have experience of stalking, harassment and violence which we have dealt with in various ways and have legitimate concerns about the proposed feature. My own experience suggests that carefully considered, detailed policy and robust moderation are much more important requirements and likely to be far more effective than software toggles could ever hope to be, with much less potential for unfortunate, unintended consequences.

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50

We have that. I have once had reason to approach @tiwane for help. I don’t remember what the issue was, I do remember it was resolved. Also flagging comments in the forum - gets effectively moderated. Live, active, kind (both ways) moderation makes all the difference on social media.

I help to moderate a wildfire group in FB. Intended to be a thread for news updates about local fires. We don’t want speculation or nastiness, thank you.

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51

Yes, we do and yes, it does. A moderator is able to respond to harassment pretty much immediately, especially if informed by a clear policy that says “this sort of behaviour warrants such and such a measure.” Some behaviours should be immediate cause for termination of the account.

So far the only real arguments for this proposal are that some people are occasionally followed by obnoxious people and it’s how Facebook and Twitter do it. For the former, a toggle to block following is not going to solve anything that moderation couldn’t deal with better. On the latter, Facebook and Twitter are morasses of vileness and their practices for dealing with the vileness are demonstrably pretty useless. iNat, as you note, is pretty good at keeping things civil and its main tool for that is effective moderation. If you want to make things even better, maybe look at ways to beef that up.

Anyway, if there was an option for a no vote I’d be casting one. If it’s implemented it won’t be a big deal but that shouldn’t make it automatic.

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52

An argument that I don’t see anyone has made, in favor of being able to remove followers, is that I am an educator who has students use iNaturalist for assignments. They are explicitly told not to follow me, yet some of them do. A year later, two years later, five years later, I’m left with dozens of followers who are not even active anymore on iNaturalist, a constant reminder of students who don’t know how to follow basic instructions. This is obviously a minor point, and I have just accepted it for five years. I am not being harassed, don’t feel threatened in anyway, I just don’t like having a bunch of inactive ‘followers’ who never followed me for any meaningful reason. I would never remove someone just because I don’t want followers (even though I am of a generation & personality where online ‘following’ is kinda creepy, but I accept that it is not that way for others; I do follow one person, whom I contacted for permission, because I wanted to empirically know what it meant), and I would never remove an active user, even if they have never directly interacted with me. I realize this is mostly just my brain doing its thing, but why on earth do I need/want a constant reminder of students who can’t follow instructions?

More practically, I will sometimes click on a follower to then scroll through their observations for indets or unknown plants (anything that doesn’t have at least a family name). I do this because I have had several people respond that they really appreciate me working through their indets or that they appreciate the ID tips/hints I shared, and I sometimes like to offer my services directly to followers. I realize that not all followers want my direct feedback or interaction, but when I’m in the mood, it seems like a reasonable thing for me to do. Yet with 130+ followers, it is difficult to keep everyone straight, without resorting to some spreadsheet type approach (taking some of the spontaneous fun out of iNat). So, practically, it would help me refind joy in helping followers if I didn’t have to look at 20-30+ inactive ex-students. Yes, I understand that some people will just want to block all followers, which might be offputting to others, but if iNat is the inclusive community I think it is, then we just accept that some people will obscure localities, prevent others from offering IDs, etc. That is, iNat already allows for the blockers to be part of the community, no? So, why not let them, us, me also choose to sometimes remove followers. For me, it is not a punitive thing. It is just a desire to have a bit less clutter. I accept that people follow others for various reasons, and I would never want to hurt someone else’s feelings over this, but even if someone does choose to take offense (over actions that were not meant to offend), so be it. That person will know I was not a good person to follow and can avoid me. Hopefully it will never come to that, for me personally. I just don’t want to keep dragging around inactive deadweight reminders of students who couldn’t follow instructions, forcing me to now sort through a bunch of clutter when I want to interact with a follower (most of whom I don’t know, so keeping all the usernames straight is sometimes a chore).

[For what it is worth, I am the kind of person who goes through my various inboxes & such 1 or 2 times a year and deletes almost everything. It just feels so oppresive, cloying, cluttered to see hundreds of emails or followers or anything, sometimes, so I do understand that my desire here might be seen as idiosyncratic. I’m not looking for sympathy or even full understanding from everyone else, but it has twice been suggested that I’m on the edge of the spectrum, and I mention this because part of the issue is about continuing to have iNat be a place where all but the most extreme haters feel welcome, no? It hurts no one to let me remove inactive ex-student followers, and it helps me, even if it’s just my brain being weird? Sounds like something I could support.]

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53

I’m with you. I also like to tidy up online deadwood.
(But, dead wood serves a good purpose in my garden)

Seems reasonable to be able to ‘be UNfollowed by iNatters who are inactive’ They neither know nor care. But you would be able to use iNat more efficiently.

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54

Would having policy to follow meet your need for order? We can see how that might be soothing for many users. For us, we prefer to have a say in how harassment or other behaviors directed toward us are handled. Specifically, we do not prefer a zero-tolerance policy that results in punishment of a user (ie account termination) as this is not aligned with our values. Could you support measures that allow input from the party experiencing unwanted interactions?

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55

I’m not keen on blocking, just because someone is following you. Is it going to change my experience on the site? Probably not, so if it benefits others by reducing stalking, then OK, I guess. Frankly I do block people on twitter, but that’s not just because they are following me. They are usually actively trying to hurt, manipulate, or frighten either myself or someone else. iNat is, fortunately, not that kind of site. The people I follow are in states (sometimes counties) I actively iNat in and, so, I have some idea of what they are observing and can help with IDs or they are people who help me or their observations give me a sense of other things I might be able to find in those areas. But, if someone asked me to unfollow them, I would without question or delay. I don’t hang out where I’m not wanted. :)

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56

My need for order? Seriously?

Soothing? As has been made clear by some unpleasantness in this forum on a few occasions, not everybody comes to the table with the same values. Policy means that everybody knows what the limits are and the folks who have to make difficult decisions have something to work with. Making it up as you go along is a bad idea.

I can’t imagine a reasonable policy that didn’t include that as a main feature. On the other hand, an individual experiencing harassment might not be aware of past behaviours from their harasser toward other iNat members and there is a role for moderators in preempting efforts at reconciliation between users when one of the parties has a history of bad faith. Discussing any member’s past behaviour with other users, even to warn them, really opens the door to some serious privacy issues. There may be times when mods and staff just have to take action and deal with the flack from those who don’t know the whole story.

I believe strongly in the iNat doctrine that we should assume that our fellow users mean no harm as the departure point for our conversations. I believe in second chances and the importance of teachable moments. I have also had to deal with the consequences of abuse that was not dealt with when it should have been in both my professional and personal life. Termination of an account is not something that should be done lightly but it needs to be an option and the circumstances in which it should be done need to be outlined for moderators and staff, if only to ensure fairness. That includes fairness to iNat members who may be in the throes of a mental health crisis and are leaving a social media trail that will haunt them going forward. These are hard things for any facilitator/manager/moderator to contend with. Thinking about what to do before things go sideways is not evidence of a need for order or soothing anxious users, it’s about being responsible and making sure that when people are being hurt the tools are in place to limit the harm.

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57

Yes

We believe that everyone has a need for order, that the need for order is universal. The difference among people, as we see it, comes with the strategies people use to meet their needs, such as for order. You might want rules in place so that staff has them to follow. That could meet your need for order. You don’t have to share these beliefs. And we believe them.

We also believe that everyone has emotions. We can imagine that having rules in place could feel soothing, a relief, to know one has some protection.

Your response to our post did not meet our need for being seen as a compassionate person who meant no harm.

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58

Perhaps. I am sorry if my response was hurtful. May I suggest that reducing a suggestion for protecting people from harm to a perceived personal need for order was not a compassionate read.

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59

There’s nothing harmful from followers and being able to get rid of them won’t reduce any possible harm, the order was actually the only good idea listed here, being able to make abandoned school accounts to unfollow you would be nice. Your responce before that was much more rude than mention of order.

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60

I agree. My point was that allowing widespread of blocking of followers for the stated purpose of controlling harassment would harm iNat functionality and a better approach to dealing with harassers would be to better empower moderators and staff to address actual instances of harassment. If somebody is persistently harassing others or otherwise engaging in threatening behaviour on iNat they should be removed and there should be guidelines for that.

The only mention of order that I’m aware of was a reference to my perceived need for order, which was not an idea so much as an assertion about my reasons for suggesting a course of action. Was there something else I missed?

Yes.

Which response are you referring to?

61

It was in a message from another user, so there could be some mesplacement happening.

And there are, people are blocked very often, I would add I want to have some users to be blocked from iding, but not observing.

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63

I’m aware of some of those instances and tried to help with a couple where it seemed apparent to me there were some mental health challenges involved. As a relatively low-level member I’m not privy to the details of iNat policy. My comment

frames the rest of my comments on this topic. If an actual policy already exists then it’s all good. The rest of my discussion was all about why moderation is a better solution to people’s concerns about being followed than making it harder to follow would be.

I’m sorry if I was rude.

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65

I think the thought about regular following up (as a follower) of someone not doing a good job is worthwhile. If you’re doing iNat, surely you should be comfortable with somebody checking your data.
It’s not like they’re trying to steal your credit card data.

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66

does following another user actually do anything beyond subscribing to their observations? if not, it seems like you should be able to block folks from following you and subscribing to your observations as part of the regular blocking process.

other than that, if folks just don’t want to reveal who is following them, there should be an option just to hide that section in the user profile.

i don’t see any point in having functionality to kick off followers one by one (or preventing folks from following you altogether) beyond that.

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67

You’re subscribed to their observations and journal posts.

if not, it seems like you should be able to block folks from following you and subscribing to your observations as part of the regular blocking process.

That’s what blocking does (among other things).

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68

ok. if that’s how things work, then i’m thinking the only additional functionality needed would be just an option in the account settings to hide the followers section(s) in your public profile page. maybe there could also be a separate option to hide the following section in your public profile page.

(you might still show up in the following section in other users’ profiles if they’ve elected to show that section, but i think that’s okay.)

70

I don’t think we need to change anything. As stated being a Follower or not does not change access to
content at all, which can be viewed readily with a bookmark or search.

There are rules for the site and methods to flag inappropriate and/or malicious behaviour for action.

If it is changed/removed, I’d almost put a bet on a thread appearing not long after asking for the feature to be reversed because of X other problem, or “I just accidentally removed my followers, how do I get them back?”

In this case, asking the person to un-follow directly through PM (rather than broadcast the request through the forum?) and if they won’t then go to the admins/moderators with context for why that’s a significant problem.

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