Out of curiosity, why do you not like those features?
To me, "seen" is a feedback mechanism. When I send a message to you, I don't always need a response, but I do usually want to know that you saw the message -- sort of an ACK.
This is a little difficult to explain, but as someone who (extremely ashamedly, in hindsight) became very obsessive about romantic interests - to the level of stalking behavior - at least twice over the course of my life - this is precisely the kind of technology design decision that has negative externalities which maybe aren't apparent to people who are of sound and balanced mind.
If someone is obsessed about another person, they're going to get the same kind of dopamine rush simply from seeing that the other person is online and active that most of us get from receiving new messages in our inbox or messaging apps. It's tricky to explain, but as you draw closer (or feel like you draw closer) to someone, the urge to be connected and know that they're present becomes overpowering. Moreso if that person is in any way encouraging this kind of dependence / attachment.
It's particularly bad when apps allow this kind of 'presence monitoring' without trying to deal with the obsessive behavior that it causes. Facebook, for example, clearly has the data and the ability to inform both parties of what is happening. Ironically in my case it suggested one of these people as a 'Close Friend'. It seems so much worse if the service provider is (at any level) encouraging these malign use cases - for the purposes of 'engagement', for example.
Fortunately I believe I now have the distance and levelheadedness to see how this all works (in terms of my own psychology, the relationships involved, and also the service providers who intermediated the communications), but it's something I wouldn't wish anyone else to suffer, and we could be a lot more careful about the way we design apps and services to avoid these kind of psychologically damaging situations.
The talk entitled 'What is Good Technology' from the 35c3 congress makes some very good points along these lines, in terms of what we can do improve our technology product decision-making process to avoid causing pain and damage to cultures or people we might not otherwise understand: http://streaming.media.ccc.de/35c3/relive/9965
Congrats for becoming a more ethical person! It sounds like you're in a better place in terms of your relationships and I can't imagine that it's been easy. Keep on truckin'
Not afraid to admit I like to pretend I haven't seen a message until I can make time to actually respond to it, if its a message asking something of me.
Maybe I should type a response the moment I receive the text across my phone alerts, but I want the freedom to defer it without having you think I'm ignoring you (even tho I am)
I believe that the iOS app started preventing these recently; I noticed that all of my Messenger notifications stopped including the text of the message, instead just stating "<name> sent a message." (or something of the like), forcing you to actually open the app.
Lets just say it was not my favorite change, and not just for the privacy reasons under discussion.
> I noticed that all of my Messenger notifications stopped including the text of the message
Isn't that a preference in the notifications setting? "Show Previews" gives the options of "Always", "When Unlocked (Default)", "Never". Perhaps it's just defaulted to "When Unlocked" after an update?
I did just check, and it is set as "When Unlocked (default)". The unlocked screen does just show a no-preview Messenger notification, the actual preview text seems to be being provided to iOS as "<name> sent a message".
I do the same. I do feel ok not responding right away after I see a message, though. I wonder if it’s a cultural expectation that is/will change over time.
Because a lot of people are not like you. If someone saw that I read their message they might immediately expect a response, and be left wondering why it took hours to get back to them (and react negatively to the delay). Not everyone treats messaging as the async thing it is.
I think at its very base it's a privacy issue, which is not surprising that FB has chosen to ignore it. Just because you sent me a message, why should you then be privy to see if I've read it or not without me explicitly doing something, or at least explicitly having the option to enable or disable this.
Reading a message and not replying is considered rude but I don't want to reply to everything right away especially if it takes a lot of time to reply. I would rather there just be a thumbs up button on the screen so I can say I have read the message and do not intend to reply.
To me, "seen" is a feedback mechanism. When I send a message to you, I don't always need a response, but I do usually want to know that you saw the message -- sort of an ACK.