New online status

Can i just express that I find the new feature that broadcasts whether I’m currently here to the whole world a really rather huge privacy issue.

Is it possible to opt out of that?

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Out of curiosity can you clarify the privacy issue?

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That literally everyone can see I’m currently here.

I don’t like everyone knowing “where” I am - neither physical location nor online presence

Out of curiosity can we conduct an experiment?

Can you tab to another tab and come back in 30 or so. I want to see if it shows you as online or not

Personally I reckon that the plug-in will be rather inaccurate and not really be an issue in reality

Yeah, it seems to take multiple minutes to trigger. Still don’t like it. :man_shrugging:

On other forums you can usually opt out of it, and I always do, hence my question

Discourse records when you were last seen and it’s always been available on your profile - this isn’t new.

This is the same on any Discourse setup, for example:

The online feature just shows users “last seen” in the last 5 minutes. Rather than additional tracking, it’s just grouping already saved data and displaying it in a new place

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I think it’s particularly that list of online users, which is essentially the 1st thing anyone sees (even logged out users) which I find rather intrusive, to be honest.

It also doesn’t seem to honor this setting

Even logged out users can see it on your profile. Nothing new is being shown.

There isn’t a way of disabling the “last seen” part on Discourse. It can be hidden for all users, but not individually.

I’ll raise this with Discourse - seems like a bug

Looks like for me this is working

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Stay around for 10 min and check again

That’s interesting. Have you only just enabled this or has it been enabled for a while?

I notice your avatar isn’t green either :thinking:

In this case, @PoelieV was last seen “just now”, so should appear in the list

I have just enabled this.

Why does it not work for me then?

I’ve enabled the opt out and disappeared for 5 mins. I’ve come back, and I’m not appearing online.

Maybe it just needs to ‘expire’?

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Hm. I’ve logged out and back in. Now wait and see if I’ll stay invisible.

I realise nothing new is being shown here, but broadcasting it on the home page is something I’m uneasy with.

I’m the sort who prefers to lurk unnoticed at time. If folk can more easily see that I’m active it creates a certain expectation of engagement, whereas I prefer to reply to folk in my own time.

Reminds me the old MSN days. Couldn’t turn my computer on to get some homework done without folk spamming as to why I’ve not replied when I’m clearly active. It’s probably part of the reason I prefer imessage over the likes of messenger, besides all the other privacy and security stuff.

Any way to opt out of this?

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I’ll disable this for now and revisit it later.

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Thanks! I’m not sure exactly which setting I’m supposed to turn off on that. I presume it’s the hide my public profile one? I wouldn’t really want to do that either. Would be nice to have an in between.

Thanks!

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