Group function "private reply"

ℹ️ Support 💬 Talk (spreed)
1

Hi,

I’m testing a fresh installation of 29.0.2 for my archery club. Everything seems fine and very useful for us. For our child protection management I have to prevent private chats between adults and infants. For this i created the groups “Youth”, “Coaches” and “Adults”.

In the configuration i restricted users to only sharing with their own group and the same for the address-books too. This prevents direct private conversations → perfect!

Now I have a group chat with youth and coaches, so that they can share news. But now it is possible to use the three dot menu and click on private reply. This levers out my restrictions.

Is there any possibility to prevent this? Or is this a bug (in my Opinion it is!) ?

2

I think this boils down to Disable one-to-one conversations · Issue #7483 · nextcloud/spreed · GitHub

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hi @TheAlex welcome to the community.

your request is very special and I’m not sure there is a way to configure Nextcloud as you try to as the general design principle is collaboration and not separation. ususally direct communication between users of a system is expected/desired and I would be really surprised if I could be prevented. I’m even under impression separating user in groups doesn’t really prevents direct communications - likely it is still possible to establish direct communication if the user name of the other party is known.

I now commercial products offer “information barriers” to fulfill similar requirements (e.g. in a financial sector) but I’m not aware about such functionality in Nextcloud.

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I can understand your approach. But I don’t understand why free software solutions like Nextcloud require this, but WhatsApp, for example, completely ignores it. Maybe it’s because it can’t be prevented there? Maybe you should ask yourself whether the restriction in Nextcloud Talk really benefits anyone or just leads to users only using WhatsApp.

Anyone who is afraid to use a video conferencing solution for legal reasons should perhaps leave it at that and leave it to WhatsApp or others. Unfortunately, it is legally the better solution.

If you want to use Nextcloud Talk after all, you should perhaps consider putting Nextcloud in the hands of a provider to avoid being accused of looking into chats, for example.

5

Of course, such requirements are usually not just about protecting minors, but also about protecting yourself as a platform operator.

Let’s say a minor is inappropriately approached by an adult member of the club, it obviously looks a lot worse for the club if it has happened through their own platform than through a third party service that is not under their control, not to mention the legal implications that may be involved in running such a platform, especially if it provides access to minors.

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Exactly. Although I think it’s worse with self-hosted Nextcloud Talk than with WhatsApp. And I would only hand over data for Nextcloud Talk and WhatsApp on a court order. Whereby with WhatsApp it would probably come to nothing. The provider is far too big and not very vulnerable and also has end-to-end encryption. Apart from metadata, there is probably nothing to be gained from WhatsApp. Nextcloud Talk has ruined the reputation of the organisation or the administrators and that’s it. Oh, and Nextcloud is also dragged into the mud. But WhatsApp is systemically relevant. Errors are then only searched for with the users and not with WhatsApp and its administrators.

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Hi,

so many answers… :+1:

@SysKeeper: with that, all private conversations will be disabled. This is not my goal, but thanks for the idea.

@wwe: You are right, our Goal is collaboration too. But the past has shown, that the contact data of our youth has to be protected, since there were indications of abuse. And yes, this request is very special :wink: I know this, but I thought a short question in this board will clear things.

@devnull: Did I hear a little frustration there? :see_no_evil: I can understand your point, but I have another opinion. Of course, Whatsapp with its paid developers would easily code such functions. But most companies didn’t look for the best/the right solution, they look for the most cost efficient way to generate money → Whatsapp (meta) makes it really simple for them, in their usage agreement they exclude younger people. So why should free software do it better? Free software is for me “from people for people” or like our sports clubs, where volunteers work and take care for other members without getting money for this. We work for the general public and for its betterment. This is a noble goal and is not always achieved, but at least we try. The point is, I’m not afraid of legal issues, I just wanted to use this idea to protect our younger members but still keep them updated via group chats.

@bb77: Yep, a great portion of self defense is part of that. Outside the IT-World it is the same. Child protection management targets there too, e.g. to minimize critical contacts like in locker rooms or on trips and to name trusted members that can be asked for help.
You are right, if an inappropriate approach happens it is worse for the club, but does it really make it better when we can say: “Not within our ability to prevent it, it happened on another plattform”. Our goal is to prevent such things as good as we can. This was my intention for this thread.

Perhaps interesting for everyone: public funding for clubs (in Germany) will depend on the existence of such child protection management in the foreseeable future. This is a big topic, but one that is only just beginning to hit the clubs.

So, I hope I was able to explain myself a little. I got the feeling that some emotions were coming up, I didn’t want to offend anyone with my question. In addition, German is my native language, so it is not always easy for me to express my intentions correctly.

Back to topic: It is not possible now and maybe never will. It’s not a bug. This is ok for me, I got my answer and now time to search for another way to handle this. Thank you all for your input.

1 Like
8

You can create or like issues. Maybe someone program it.

https://github.com/nextcloud/spreed/issues