💬 Request For Comments: Public Rooms Only (No Private Direct Messages)

[flyblackbox]

RFC: Public Rooms Only (No Private Direct Messages)

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Summary

In Quote.Vote v2, all chat and conversational interaction will take place in public rooms.
The platform will not support private one-to-one direct messaging.

Users who need private conversations can continue to use the many existing private messaging services (Signal, iMessage, WhatsApp, email, etc.), which Quote.Vote does not intend to compete with or replicate.

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Questions

This RFC proposes a deliberate design and policy decision about how conversation should occur on the platform, and requests feedback from the community.

• Are there legitimate use cases that require private DMs inside Quote.Vote, rather than existing tools?

• To replace common DM use cases, are there public by default interaction patterns we could design such as creating one on one interview style back and forth, time boxed quote rooms?

• Does this decision meaningfully strengthen trust in Quote.Vote as civic infrastructure? Or erode trust? How and why?

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Problem Statement

Private direct messaging introduces a set of product, legal, and privacy challenges that conflict with Quote.Vote’s core goals. These costs are disproportionate to the value private DMs provide within Quote.Vote’s intended use cases.

• It moves deliberation off-platform and out of public view
• It creates side channels for persuasion and coordination
• It requires the platform to store private user content and sensitive metadata
• It increases moderation, harassment, and legal exposure

Legal and Privacy Motivation

This is a deliberate legal and privacy design decision.

Private messaging systems introduce a major set of challenges:

• User harassment, backroom coercion, and complexity of moderation
• More difficult to deliver on necessary guarantees of data minimization and user safety
• Custodian liability of private user content
• Sensitive metadata (who talked to whom, when and what) routinely investigated by legal personnel
• Exposure to subpoenas and discovery

By not hosting private messages, Quote.Vote:

• Is in a stronger position to protect user privacy across all other vectors (posts, votes, metadata, logs)
• Narrows the scope of what could ever be compelled by legal process
• Collects and stores less sensitive data overall, increasing goodwill amongst the user base
• Avoids becoming a custodian of private communications, with all of the associated legal entanglements

This follows the principle that the best privacy protection is not collecting data in the first place.

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Proposed Change

• All chat and conversational interaction in v2 will occur in public rooms
• Quote.Vote will not implement private one-to-one direct messages
• Conversation will remain scoped, contextual, and moderated through public mechanisms

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Motivation

Product Motivation

Public rooms:

• Reinforce the platform’s focus on transparent discourse, not private negotiation
• Align more closely with our public discourse quoting, voting, and moderation mechanics
• Keep all conversations uniformly contextual and attributable with no undisclosed user information being created
• Reduces off-channel persuasion and shadow coordination

If something is worth discussing on Quote.Vote, the default assumption is that it should happen in view of the community.

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Decision Posture

This is not a closed decision.
It is presented as a principled starting point.

Thoughtful disagreement, edge cases, and alternative designs are welcome.