New Rule: DNI (Do Not Interact) Lists are Banned

[samㅤ]

one of the biggest rules of early internet was "don't tell people what upsets you" because there ARE people who are going to send you that stuff. most early memes are centered around doing just that.
DNI listing all the stuff that can cause you harm is not at all safe.

if you notice someone who don't quite vibe with, just avoid or block them.

[nickjr]

35 pages... wow... I'm not sure I wanna read through all of that lol

Without reading those 35 pages... I agree with this rule change. Maybe it's just the DNI lists that I've seen personally, but the ones that I've seen that are genuine and not inflammatory/discrimination disguised as trauma* tend to be at least one of the following, if not all of them:

• very personal and can absolutely be used to further traumatize the poster before they get a chance to block the harasser
• listing people who, quite frankly, are not going to care about your DNI list at best and will actually be likely to harass you because of your DNI list
• so, so, so easy to bypass, because this is the Internet, where it is super easy to take on any persona you want, especially when you can just... make another account (more applicable on sites where you're allowed to have multiple accounts, but still applicable to CS, because who's verifying that the sibling who's sending fair trades is actually a real human being? You can't verify that without breaking CS rules. And even if you could, do you have access to their internet history? Their brain?)

I'm sorry, because I really do empathize with the idea behind DNI lists as someone who also has triggers, but most DNI lists give you a false sense of security, because most of the time, you're assuming good faith when those who cross the line you've drawn will not care.

* I'm not even making assumptions here... I'm talking about the people who clearly make DNI lists that cheapen the whole idea behind DNI lists by including statements like "because all Genshin Impact fans are disgusting for supporting a Chinese game". Just like with every legitimate concern, there are people who cheapen it--but this time there seems to be a lot of them, for some reason...

[idiosyncrasy]

not sure how i feel about this new rule just yet, but CS staff has their reasons for it, and i respect their choice (and the rule, of course)

thank you guys for letting us know!

in my personal opinion, i feel that DNI lists are kinda um... well... not very effective? but then again, i have never used one and i do not plan to because i feel like it wouldn't work like intended. plus i completely agree that it can be dangerous to list your triggers, and listing your triggers can well... trigger people. lol. i dunno but anyways thank you staff for letting us know, we, er well i respect this new rule that has been enforced :)

[Vulppix]

I too, agree with this rule change, for many reasons that have already been stated before. DNIs are largely unhelpful in my opinion, and I often find myself skipping them entirely if they are too long. Sometimes I just prefer not to interact with people in general if their DNI is too long, even if none of it applies to me.

[nickjr]

love this new rule, mostly because of the aforementioned reasons! I do believe that a lot of the younger people on this site have grown up with less education on internet safety as us older people have, as technology has gradually taken over much of the schooling/general past time sphere.
I would also like to point out to a lot of the people that are having trouble wrapping their heads around this that this isn't a website, like Twitter or Tumblr where a DNI list would be a practical way to orient a safe space for you on your profile. On websites like those, you can customize your experience, follow people that you feel safe and comfortable following, and have your entire feed be things that make you feel happy and remain untriggered. However, on a forum site like this, it's nearly unavoidable to enter the forums and not have the possibility of seeing content that might trigger you, particularly if you have a lot of triggers. Since you can't control who posts where, what you see, who replies so on and so forth, a DNI list is essentially useless in this application. It does more harm than good to put out all your private information into the world for potentially malicious people to see, and, in addition, doesn't necessarily mean that anyone will even read it, good intentions or not.
Additionally, even in my peak of activity on chickensmoothie (which, as you can tell from my post count, was a lot), it wasn't common that people would interact with me through DM's or trades (less than 5 times a week), and the people I would interact with on forums were interactions that I personally sought out. The threat of people interacting with you and accidentally triggering you I would say is much less than the threat of a malicious person having all of your triggers and dislikes. This is also coming from the perspective of someone with a few triggers, we all have them.

Decided to at least look at the previous page and found this post.

THIS SO MUCH.

CS is not social media. CS is a forum. The two are fundamentally different--nearly opposites, in fact.

And you really, really, really should not be putting so much of yourself on the internet, no matter how much companies want you to do so.

[gothic knight]

one of the biggest rules of early internet was "don't tell people what upsets you" because there ARE people who are going to send you that stuff. most early memes are centered around doing just that.
DNI listing all the stuff that can cause you harm is not at all safe.

if you notice someone who don't quite vibe with, just avoid or block them.

very much agree with this. i remember being very young and having it drilled into my head that you should not share very personal information freely on the internet. granted, this was before most social media was a big thing and there has been a huge cultural shift in terms of internet privacy, but i do think people are too quick to share all their information with people who are strangers to them. it's one thing to share your name, or pronouns, or interests, or what have you of course, but i think sharing triggers or things that upset you with the general population of the internet is kind of a scary concept and something that should not be taken as lightly as people do.

and i truly do understand the comfort that comes from DNI lists, as someone who used to follow those kinds of things, but as i've gotten older i've realized the best thing you can do to protect yourself from things that may upset you is to be proactive, while also accepting that you can't always avoid things that upset you. that is, unfortunately, just the nature of reality and life. the best someone can do is just take care of themselves and have coping mechanisms in place to help ground themselves if they have an interaction that triggers them. i understand it's not easy, but like i said, that's really just how life is.

it's also a little alarming, honestly, that people may see things in these lists and look them up without realizing how they may be upsetting to some people. i am personally not bothered by too much but i have seen DNI lists that list things that even squick me out a little.

[ellebee]

sup, i have a question to ask on the behalf of others:

- is saying "dni" in general okay? for example, if a user does not want to interact with anyone at a given moment. this could also be "no DMs" "do not message me". however this would not discriminate by a specific group or interest etc.

thanks!

-snip-

I believe discord also has settings to control who can send you DMs. If you don’t want someone to contact you on another site, don’t link to it.

I also just wanted to ask for clarification! I also help moderate a CS discord connected to this site and advertised here directly.
I believe jake is trying to ask for "do not DM" in discord statuses, as we also have to do checks and moderate user's statuses often, so it seems there's a bit of a case-by-case grey area here. Since like they said, it's not really exclusive to a certain person or group, nor is it a trigger, it's more of a polite request to not contact, almost like a "do not disturb".
Would this be okay? If not, I would really appreciate an explanation, genuinely because I would need the explanation to explain to users in the server I moderate if/when I need to contact them about changing their status : )
Thank you!

[Goku-san]

-Snip-

it's also a little alarming, honestly, that people may see things in these lists and look them up without realizing how they may be upsetting to some people. i am personally not bothered by too much but i have seen DNI lists that list things that even squick me out a little.

Some things on those lists make me concerned on what spaces these people were in to warrant having that item added to their list.

I agree with a few posts back that there needs to be a sticky thread about basic internet safety to help further to keep folks on CS safe.

~LLAP 🖖

[002]

I believe discord also has settings to control who can send you DMs. If you don’t want someone to contact you on another site, don’t link to it.

I also just wanted to ask for clarification! I also help moderate a CS discord connected to this site and advertised here directly.
I believe jake is trying to ask for "do not DM" in discord statuses, as we also have to do checks and moderate user's statuses often, so it seems there's a bit of a case-by-case grey area here. Since like they said, it's not really exclusive to a certain person or group, nor is it a trigger, it's more of a polite request to not contact, almost like a "do not disturb".
Would this be okay? If not, I would really appreciate an explanation, genuinely because I would need the explanation to explain to users in the server I moderate if/when I need to contact them about changing their status : )
Thank you!

I would assume it's okay considering it doesn't list off triggers or specific subjects, the rule just states "DNI lists are banned", so I assume a simple "do not interact." is fine since it doesn't address any subjects or people

[Lacuna]

If you are unable to update your settings to turn off DMs for some reason I don’t think we would have a problem with “please don’t message me” on a discord status. However, I do think it’s important to use the settings available to you and not just rely on people seeing and/or obeying your request.