There is a need by some people to be able to avoid private messages for non-contacts.
Why?: There are many reasons on why to add this feature.
As a social person i enjoy being inside Public Groups. It's amazing to be able to talk to other people from all around the world.
But it comes with a cost:
Users/Scammers/Spammers and Autommated Accouns that are (or not) inside public groups can annoy you in private.
Users (mostly male) contact other users (mostly female) to annoy them and molest them in private.(sending dick pics and other nasty things)
We have a big report button, yes, but it's not enough. It gets tedious to every day for months pressing that report button for many strangers.
There would be no problem if it was just 1 or 2 every month... But it's way way more!!
Your only option is 1) Resign and Accept it or 2) Leave any Public Group.
Scammers contacting Users to do what they know best: Scam people. At least this ones don't target just a group.
Same problem as above: Yeah, we have a report button but it gets tedious if you have to report every day a bunch of scammers.
Automated accounts and Spammers contact you in private to send you advertisments of any kind (i even received ads from a Shoe Maker in Iran, i am from europe :shrug:).
Same as before: You have a big red block and report button but: It's not enough!!
Most of those automated accounts or spammers accounts are throw away accounts so the report button is useless. Yes that account will get a limitation but no one cares!
They can create as many accounts they like.
It's more! combine the options above!! You get bombarded every day from unknown Accounts just for making a social life inside Public Groups!!!!!
That's an issue..
For some unclear reason Telegram decided to just ignore the issue. They added a bunch of options that are not enough.
For example there is a hidden privacy option to Archive and Silence new Private Messages from non-contact users.
It's a step forward but this option only appears if you litterally get bombarded with hundreds of unknown users...
Most of the people that ask for a way to disable Private Messages from non-contacts are females.
Making that option hidden until some unknown conditional is reached feels like Telegram is embracing all those Creeps to allow them to annoy those females in private.
Not letting anyone decide if they want to (or not) receive private messages just kills the spirit of Public Groups for some minorities.
To be fair: We already asked and made noise with this topic back in 2016 or 2017... Probably no one will give a f*** about this.
Telegram Team lives in a bubble for years, they see things from another prespective as a New User that starts with Telegram, enters it's first masive Public Group and then it gets countless messages from bad people.
And don't take me wrong... More than 80% of people are really nice human beings... But in a group of 10K users even if just the 10% are the worst it's enough to drive you crazy with private messages from strangers.
I agree with Dot on this one. What differentiates Telegram from others is the ability to reach out to people all around the world. If someone posted something interesting on a public forum, you can reach out to them and try to make a friend. If messages from non-contacts are blocked, then Telegram would become this narrow messenger only for communicating with friends and family. THAT is how Telegram would go downhill, I think.
What I don’t quite agree on is “turning messages from strangers into requests for communication”. If you’re getting a lot of messages and are fed up with the scams/gross pictures, how likely is it you would accept requests? Not very likely right? So we’re back to the same box. And requests for communication sound a lot like Facebook friend requests… :/
My suggestion: Keep everything as it is but block strangers from sending picture/video files. In other words, strangers can still contact you but can only send text based messages. After you’ve added them to your contact list, then they can send you pictures and videos.
"Keep everything as it is but block strangers from sending picture/video files. In other words, strangers can still contact you but can only send text based messages. After you’ve added them to your contact list, then they can send you pictures and videos."
This solves nothing I'm afraid and causes more issues than not. Most of cryptoscammers never sent me any image at all. Also all the people that contacted me just to send me insults. What about the links? And why would you force me to add them as contacts? What if I want only my family as contacts so they see my profile picture and/or phone number? I use contacts very carefully, I don't add people who aren't very close to me and now I would have to so they can send me even a dumb meme? Too much.
"If you’re getting a lot of messages and are fed up with the scams/gross pictures, how likely is it you would accept requests? Not very likely right?"
Yes, not very likely, but you could just easily sieve through them, reject fast the obvious ones etc.
"And requests for communication sound a lot like Facebook friend requests… :/"
And what's wrong about it? We can do it better, I don't want notification center, I want to put in place that already exists, just is useless for the 99% of the time.
"And why would you force me to add them as contacts?"
I don't mean you have to add them as contacts. And there's no notification center. I was more thinking of, after you've chatted with them for a while and you think this person is ok, then you may want to add them to your contacts. It's only if and after you've added them as a contact that they can send you pictures/videos. You're still free to ignore them if you choose.
I am sorry Toku and dotvhs, i can't add more suggestions to this card. I added the links to your messages. If you feel like it you can create a new suggestion and i'll like it here. I reiterate that my goal is to raise attention to this topic. It's a mess since long. Other suggestions are also valid!.
I understood what you meant but again, it forces me to add person to my contacts while I don't want to do that just to see an image or a video. What about stickers? There are plenty floating NSFW stickers around.
Again, I don't think your proposed solution solves anything in this topic :(
To be honest? I don't want to add users as contacts just to talk to them. Also i agree with you that a popup or a place where a notification raises up to letting other start a conversation with you will have the same issue as the block and report big button we have now. If you are one of those unfortunate users that receive a lot of private messages from strangers you'll end up with many confirmation messages too. And most of the time you don't know what they want until you talk a few phrases with them. So it's completely useless. (it's just my opinion)
I would love to be able to allow or not that strangers would contact me without having to press things and do stuff.
"If you are one of those unfortunate users that receive a lot of private messages from strangers you'll end up with many confirmation messages too. And most of the time you don't know what they want until you talk a few phrases with them."
That's exactly why I'm having doubts about the "requests to communicate" suggestion. It's a lot like "asking to ask". (Just ask!) You don't know what they want from you so how are you supposed to vet them?
𝗛𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀
Way to much text for me. I would say, maybe after some amount of blocked/reported users the option to automatically mute&archive should appear. Let's say for example if 10 users were blocked in the past 90 days or if 30 users were blocked in total since registration
Another but similar suggestion: First message sent by stranger can only be text-based. Then if you choose to engage with them, i.e. reply, then the capability to send you pictures/videos is unlocked for them. That should screen off some people because it’s more work for them. And you never have to add anyone to your contacts.
Just throwing ideas out there…
Sen
Or keyword feature that allows users to input custom keywords, as language and pickup lines for sexting evolves, that auto sends these messages to a spam folder for review. Also a select all and/or multiple message selection feature that has the option to report all as spam, harassment, etc.
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What I don’t quite agree on is “turning messages from strangers into requests for communication”. If you’re getting a lot of messages and are fed up with the scams/gross pictures, how likely is it you would accept requests? Not very likely right? So we’re back to the same box. And requests for communication sound a lot like Facebook friend requests… :/
My suggestion: Keep everything as it is but block strangers from sending picture/video files. In other words, strangers can still contact you but can only send text based messages. After you’ve added them to your contact list, then they can send you pictures and videos.
This solves nothing I'm afraid and causes more issues than not. Most of cryptoscammers never sent me any image at all. Also all the people that contacted me just to send me insults. What about the links? And why would you force me to add them as contacts? What if I want only my family as contacts so they see my profile picture and/or phone number? I use contacts very carefully, I don't add people who aren't very close to me and now I would have to so they can send me even a dumb meme? Too much.
"If you’re getting a lot of messages and are fed up with the scams/gross pictures, how likely is it you would accept requests? Not very likely right?"
Yes, not very likely, but you could just easily sieve through them, reject fast the obvious ones etc.
"And requests for communication sound a lot like Facebook friend requests… :/"
And what's wrong about it? We can do it better, I don't want notification center, I want to put in place that already exists, just is useless for the 99% of the time.
I don't mean you have to add them as contacts. And there's no notification center. I was more thinking of, after you've chatted with them for a while and you think this person is ok, then you may want to add them to your contacts. It's only if and after you've added them as a contact that they can send you pictures/videos. You're still free to ignore them if you choose.
I reiterate that my goal is to raise attention to this topic. It's a mess since long.
Other suggestions are also valid!.
Again, I don't think your proposed solution solves anything in this topic :(
Also i agree with you that a popup or a place where a notification raises up to letting other start a conversation with you will have the same issue as the block and report big button we have now.
If you are one of those unfortunate users that receive a lot of private messages from strangers you'll end up with many confirmation messages too. And most of the time you don't know what they want until you talk a few phrases with them. So it's completely useless.
(it's just my opinion)
I would love to be able to allow or not that strangers would contact me without having to press things and do stuff.
That's exactly why I'm having doubts about the "requests to communicate" suggestion. It's a lot like "asking to ask". (Just ask!) You don't know what they want from you so how are you supposed to vet them?
Another but similar suggestion: First message sent by stranger can only be text-based. Then if you choose to engage with them, i.e. reply, then the capability to send you pictures/videos is unlocked for them. That should screen off some people because it’s more work for them. And you never have to add anyone to your contacts.
Just throwing ideas out there…