Sharing of Information
Sharing With Other Zwift Users
Part of the fun of Zwift is connecting with other users around the world. So, when you use Zwift Services, we share information about you with other users. This includes your profile information (including your first and last name, country, gender, height, weight, and age) and information about your workouts (such as what ride or run you took and when, how fast you went, and how you performed). This information is available to other users both while you work out and after, and your workout may be broadcast on a service like Twitch TV or YouTube by Zwift or by other users. In addition, your posts on message boards and in discussion rooms will be visible to Zwift and other Zwift users. We do not share your date of birth or your email address with other users without your consent.
Now posted clearly in the Terms of Use and you have to consent .
All looking like someone stepping in that knew what they were doing here . Thumbs up from me .
Hi Steve,
In a âpure powerâ event, speed could be calculated based on a nominal weight and height which is the same for all.
As for âverifiedâ, some people - who really want to make sure their data on Zwift matches real life as accurately as possible - may avoid âpure powerâ races and compete in others instead.
Whereas some other people - who arenât as obsessed about accuracy - may be happier to race where they know itâs impossible for people to gain an advantage by lying about their weight or height.
I feel itâs important to remember different people want different things and thereâs no magic set of rules which everyone will love, so why not have a few options for people?
It doesnât seem new to me. It might be, but Iâm quite sure Iâve read something very similar to that in the past - although not necessarily on ZwiftPower.
Good post. I actually think this postponed arrangement makes quite a lot of sense for now. Thereâs no real need for height and weight to be freely visible in the game and Companion app, but people who are bothered enough about fair racing and filtered results tend to register with ZwiftPower, which by definition is an âopt inâ for that data to be shown. Could still be better for data protection etc IMO (for example does it really need to be completely open at all times for the whole world to see?) but itâs a sensible way to keep to the original intention whilst keeping racers content.
But yeah the bigger question is whatâs next to keep improving racing on the platform; dealing with cheating and keeping things as fair as possible.
I completely agree. I donât care if you are 65kg or 85kg.
What I do care about is that your in-game weight reflects your real life weight. I donât need to know what that is. Nor how tall to the centimetre. I care that my races are against fair competition and are played on a level field.
Although that said, Iâd like avatars to reflect these things to a greater extent than they do at the moment; to able to tell a short climber from a muscly sprinter. The wider variety in rider models would make the game more visually diverse, and make it even less the case that I should have some other way of knowing how heavy a rider is.
(Of course, I understand that going too far down this path would be the same problem in different clothesâŚ)
Thanks for this decision. I would suggest that future decisions, maybe you bring those in front of the community and gauge the feedback, and then go make your decision with this community feedback inhand. Have a great day and take care.
I mean⌠so what. You are going to delay hideing the weight column. But when you do hide it are you also going to hide the 1,2,5,20min wpk and Watts column too?
Anyone can derive competitor weight from that (kg=w/wpk). So removing it is completely pointless.
If that happens though then all bets are off and zwift power becomes essential useless as spotting iffy results.
The anti sandbagging isnât very good either. One race I did in an ASB beta one of the competitors was out of the saddle the whole time putting out a power that would make Lance Armstrong cry, did he get coned? No⌠and his power graph in companion was completely red. He probably patted himself on the back thinking âstrong rideâ . Meanwhile the racing sucks for everyone else. No one can break away. No one can attack we all just end up getting motorpaced by thease clueless individuals on dodgy setups.
Zwift at the end of the day do not care about any of this. All they want is high adoption like pelaton and to collect all that lovely lovely money .
Alienating pppl with body image problems doesnât help with this. In fact these are exactly the kind of people zwift want to attract. Just like how gymâs work. Only 20% [citation needed] of the signed up members actually go to the gym the rest signed up on a new yearâs resolution guilt trip. Then spend the rest of the year feeling guilty for not going. So no zwift doesnât even really care about the people they say they are trying to protect here.
Just like the gyms, zwift just want them to sign up and stay signed up. If you pardon the pun all zwift cares about is its bottom line. Which is why the features we need to make racing fair and transparent will never materialise, and why they wonât ban or put disruptive zpower riders in their own category.
It is what it is. And anyway as lockdown eases, and summer comes to the northern hemisphere the âracing communityâ will probably diminish anyway, as these ppl move to irl racing or riding outside. Itâs a shrinking part of their market they know that and so they are not going to throw money at it.
I mean also at the end of the day, where irl races are won or lost by fractions of a second. Are the results in zwift ever going to be truely fair when everyoneâs pm are +/- 1% at best?
As I understand it the issue has been correctly identified now .
Its not the public sharing of data that is the problem as long as there is consent .
It is as defined in privacy by design to say that the data currently shared IS reasonable and required to operate the platform so it is acceptable to insist on it being public to fully participate in the platform.
I dont know how Zwift are going to go forward but I suspect to do that they will have to retain a seperation between zwift ( normal riders) and zwiftpower ( racing / sporting community) . I suspect this may not have been how they thought about it before ⌠but now I think they have to . .It would be a problem if there was no consent only.
What arose as I understand it is two fold someone decided to act inappropriatly using the shared data to do so . That is straight forward , deal with the perpetrator who abused the platform not the platform itself.
Secondly there was a concern that seeing other users data would lead to some people being driven into unhealthy or high risk lifestyle choices based on shared data . Again I think there has been some realisation to not reassign this dysfunctional response as a problem with the platform . I dont think the later problem has âgone awayâ or is ever really likely too⌠if its not weight , its age , heck it wouldnt surprise me if we have zwifters out there taking performance enhancing drugs (Perhaps not now, but for sure if esport gets more âregulatedâ in terms of hardware and such like they will be ) ., So what needs to be in place is some way to show that welfare is considered but not at the exclusion of the reason d;etre of the entire platform.
I dont beleive Zwift ever wanted to explicitly attract those sort of customers you refer to , if they previously niavely did they sure dont now !
The change in response to the community feedback says that at least some at Zwift DO in fact see loyal and vibrant racing community is at least as important , if not more important that all the fair weather subsciriptions numbers.
They should do , they are not netflix yet , but see how pursuiting the later at the exclusion of the former works when things go bear âŚ
I can be as vocal a critic as most but I think here now at least Zwift should be given credit where it is due . This is the opportunity for a sea change and we should give it space to blossom. Yes its just an opportunity but for me anyway that is enough to be prepared to give it a chance .
Calm down on the sycophantic praise guys. Zwift have ignored and undermined the racing community for years. Then they threaten to make things even worse by breaking something to solve a made-up problem while continuing to ignore the very real problems we have been telling them about for years, before offering merely to delay the breaking. Some of you seem to have ZSS (Zwift Stockholm Syndrome).
âYour voice is important to us.â If thatâs true why have you ignored the multitude of customer voices telling you since about 2017 that your racing system is not good enough?
Disagree. I think theyâre doing pretty well balancing a number of competing interests. Elite-grade racing is reasonably solid according to the elite guys Iâve spoken to. You can still cheat, but it requires highly intentional, relatively sophisticated means. Hard to casually cheat.
Iâve been pleasantly surprised by ZRL racing. (though WTRL deserves a ton of credit for that) at the non-elite level. Having done all 3 seasons at the B level, I have only minor things to quibble about. They seem to do a good job at keeping things pretty squared away. I recommend anyone whoâs had similar experience, donate to their PayPal/GoFundMe links.
Itâs the unaffiliated standalone races that have some trouble. There is certainly still some blatant sandbagging and cheating. And zwiftpower has helped both with automatic results stripping and the ability to âlaugh testâ rider results. But Iâve learned to accept these as just recreation, and not to wrap my ego into them. I look forward to Zwift coming up with measures to help there.
thank you for listening to us. hiding weight and height will cause me to leave Zwift. No harassment allowed anywhere i ride. just honest, hard work eating clean and healthy and trying to be as lean as strong as possible. i am proud to show it. donât ever hide it.
nowâŚletâs talk about letting us go past level 50. This is another problem. Letâs figure out a solution.
The separation, caused by differences in what data you have to agree to expose (e.g. weight/height), may just be that some features are not available if you do not want to share them. For example, you will not be able to participate in higher quality races but can still join other races with different requirements.
No one here is being sycophantic , not one person I think has said thatâs it all good now . (Including by the way Zwift also) . However if you dont encourage good change and continue to carp you will risk
loosing the small start we have just made Why would zwift continue to engage if even when
they do the right thing we still pile in with everything they have done wrongâŚ
Yes there is a long way to go .
Could you point us all at the reference system where it is currently is being done better ?
I think if you are going to call zhq out on their many mistakes itâs also worth acknowledging when they do something right.
Donât forget, they didnât have to delay or roll back on that changeâŚ
There was (so called) prominent members of the racing community advocating for the change and grifting for zwift. Itâs probably worth a look in their direction as wellâŚ
Gang - I removed a bunch of flamy posts and locked the thread temporarily. We do not allow name-calling and personally attacky posts. Iâm going to ask that everyone cool off and Iâll unlock this thread in a couple hours.
Youâre allowed to disagree, but please keep it respectful of othersâ opinions.
. Meanwhile the racing sucks for everyone else. No one can break away. No one can attack we all just end up getting motorpaced by thease clueless individuals on dodgy setups.
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