I know that this has been raised before but are Zwift looking at ensuring that group messages stay in group? “What goes on in the group stays on the group”?
There has been an unfortunate situation where some group ride messages ‘leaked’ into the free ride screen and caused offence to some riders who have publicly complained on FB. From what I understand, the ground rules of the ride were agreed in the pen and all who were on the ride were comfortable with the content but obviously as these messages leaked out of the ride, other Zwifters were able to read them.
In my eyes, this is unacceptable as we expect the rides to be mutually ‘safe spaces’ and that any conversation in the ride is intended for that audience only. To further strengthen that, it is a 1-way conversation, the whole of Zwift (in the vicinity of the ride) can read the messages but cannot interact with them - I have been caught our a few times with that, contributing to a conversation only to realise eventually that I was seeing in-event messages and that they would not be able to read my responses.
It is like having a meeting with colleagues/friends and the contents of that being broadcast to everyone who is nearby but with none of that unintended audience being able to relay their opinions or feelings to the conversation other than publicly sharing them on social media.
I’m sure that ZHQ would not like the discussions in a board meeting transmitted on a one-way discord channel!!
I think this needs to be considered as a priority to ensure that we can keep all riders safe.
Depends on the comments. If people are offended by them, whether that offence is intentional or not, probably best if any group doesn’t engage in that kind of behavior.
Not being partial to what was said or what it involved, I’d probably make a suggestion that any group ride doesn’t engage in “chat” or “banter” that could offend. Whatever was agreed in the pen might not be relevant if people late join. And it sounds pretty crude that people are discussing about the “type” of conversation and language that is going to be used in a group ride.
Always work on the principle that if you wouldn’t like something you say being made public, don’t say it. As for drawing comparison to a board meeting, I’d like to think that ZHQ don’t use language that would cause offence at board meetings. Non public information - yes…but offensive language?
And good on people for calling people out publicly for it.If it causes the individual to consider their future conduct, that’s great. I get very uncomfortable at times with some of the derogatory, offensive comments made in group rides (not pointing fingers at this incident as I wasn’t there). But I’ve been on loads of group rides where there is language that is pretty vulgar, unfortunately it’s usually sexist comments or comments of a sexual nature. It makes people feel uncomfortable and doesn’t reflect well on those making the comments.
Well there’s a swear filter, so Zwift actively give users some control. I can see both sides of this. If you don’t use offensive language or questionable content then yeah nobody can ever be offended… but rightly or wrongly people get offended by all sorts of stuff and there are tens of thousands of people online. It could have been a discussion about politics, or gun control, or Brexit, or religion. Could have been Coronavirus jokes. What’s perfectly fine to one person could be totally unacceptable to another. You’d never be able to control it without banning all chat.
OP’s point is that if there’s a feature to hold an event that’s private to ‘the world’ then all contents should be private. That way the risk of anyone not invited to that private event being offended is massively reduced or even eliminated entirely. And you can’t late join a meetup.
The comments in question were edgy jokes (let’s equate to Bernard Manning for UK readers) and were not vulgar at all. “My wife etc…”
I completely agree with calling out this - in a race I was in at the weekend, one team member called another fellow team members wheels ‘gay’. This was offensive to me (and had I not been dying at the time would have called it so!) And I agree that you should have the right to complain if you are in that event but think that it is not great for those messages to be available to the while Zwift population to scrutinize.
It is sad as the messages came from a lovely chap, who has great but edgy chat and jokes is one of our best leaders. He is is devastated that someone has taken the offence to official channels. We are too and like @Dave_ZPCMR, do not want this to happen again to anyone involved in a group ride that they have voluntarily opted into.
Agree, as I mentioned, I wasn’t pointing any fingers at anyone as I wasn’t privy to it. I was pointing out more at group rides in general and some of the stuff that goes on. We all know stuff that is definitely going to cause offence…and occasionally a well intentioned comment could cause offence depending on the subject…ala brexit, religion etc. I have no concern with making group chat private, in fact I think it should be, as a groups rides chat can clutter up your screen when you are freeriding.
I just like to think that people wouldn’t want to ensure group chat is private so they can make offensive comments and vulgar jokes. If people feel the need to host a private meetup for that kind of behaviour, I feel quite sorry for them.
Consider this scenario then. A meetup between friends is organised. They meet on Zwift due to lockdown measures. During the ride, banter goes back and forth all clean but eventually discussion turns to one rider’s relationship problems that the others are all aware of. Is it acceptable that intimate, personal comments there - in a meetup with everyone else on Zwift hidden and riding with friends that person knows and trusts - are actually broadcasted to everyone else logged in? Of course not. It’s not just about vulgar comments and being offensive, it’s a basic privacy measure that needs sorting ASAP.
Thanks for bringing this up. How chat is seen (or not seen) across the system including global, event and meetup chat is an item we need to address because it can be both unintuitive and unpredictable in some situations.
I’ll make sure the team considers the discussion in this thread as we define the work we need to do to improve the chat experience overall.
