Bad experience in Slowly? How to Report User

The official word is in, here is how this process works.

We had various recent topics with users who had unpleasant experiences, and wanted to report the offending accounts. We discussed the best way to do that; although it wasn't fully clear how the process worked.

I sent my Slowly contact person a letter and received a prompt, professional and well written reply. This being the official word, now published here so we all understand better how to do it.

TL; DR for the short attention span crowd

In a nutshell :

The best way to report a user is through the “Report User” button in the app or web. Reporting to us through the Support channel (via email) can do the same. Slowly support staff will help initiate a report from the backend after receiving users' emails, but the action is the same as reporting through the “Report User” button.

And the next step :

Currently, users can only report a user through the platform rather than a specific letter. The action will decrypt and send the letter records of both users to our moderation system for review. It allows us to deal with the case more justly, especially for issues like sexual harassment.

This is fair but also beware that all of your letters to this particular pen pal will be readable by the staff when that happens. For their decision making, this is fair and important.

For example, if a user had received explicit consent before sending any sexual content, it would not be considered harassment.

Which brings to mind a recent topic here - with a user ranting about his account being terminated, after being reported.

I feel he went beyond the expectations of the recipient, who was shocked by his next letter, reported it, and the sender lost his account. So beware of initiating any erotic or otherwise objectionable writing, as you might risk losing your account if you go beyond some reasonable limits.

The Report User Button – Where is it ?

The report button is present on each of our pen pal's letter folders. You open the desired pen pal, and depending on if you are using the Slowly Web Client, or one of the Mobile versions, the button is there – in slightly different locations.

For Slowly Web Client users:

And on the Mobile versions :

The full correspondence follows

The above section is a collage of excerpts from my contact's reply to my letter, which was very nice.

I will post the letter and responses in full as this is an important area we need to clarify and document, it's important for the health of the community.

So, here's my initial letter to Slowly contact, sent via Twitter DM to their corporate account.

From : Yann2 to Slowly Staff

Hello J,

We have a couple of topics on our subreddit with people discussing inappropriate letters some users have received. ( also a second relevant topic here ) And the general consensus is they need to be reported back, so Slowly support can deal with it and hopefully remove the users if necessary.

You mentioned to me once that the letters sit on the AWS in an encrypted form, and there's a key that selected Slowly staff can use to retrieve a letter to check on a reported user.

I have written to people and recommended keeping the offending user account around – moving it to 'Removed Users' but NOT using the 'Delete Forever' option. This is to keep the full folder of their letters available to use when reporting.

I have not used the Report function in quite a while, but I think I remember a button on the top of the letter that could be used. This might have been for the first letter received, which is usually when I would have reported a spammer/scanner suspect.

Question is how do we report an abusive person to support properly?

I suggested that emailing Slowly support at support@getslowly.com and including sections of the letter(s) they found offensive would be the best way to do it.

Is this what you would suggest? I visited the SLOWLY Help site, and could not find a single question dealing with Reporting a user. Maybe that is something that needs attention, as there have been many mentions on the subreddit of incidents that would need reporting.

I would like to post a whole topic on reddit explaining this in a very clear way, so if you can suggest what action people should take, I would really appreciate. It would be helpful to everyone and could make things easier for all as well.

Thank you, have a great day and week, J.!

Sincerely,

Yann2.

sent : Feb 16, 2022, 12:30 GMT

Response from : Slowly Staff to Yann2

Hi Yann,

Thanks for your concern and follow up.

Our team takes inappropriate user behaviour seriously and regularly reviews our report mechanism to eliminate harassment more effectively and accurately.

Currently, users can only report a user through the platform rather than a specific letter. The action will decrypt and send the letter records of both users to our moderation system for review. It allows us to deal with the case more justly, especially for issues like sexual harassment.

For example, if a user had received explicit consent before sending any sexual content, it would not be considered harassment.

The best way to report a user is through the “Report User” button in the app or web. Reporting to us through the Support channel can do the same. CS will help initiate a report from the backend after receiving users' emails, but the action is the same as reporting through the “Report User” button.

I totally understand your and other users' concern regarding the safety of using Slowly. So, I have sent a note to our content team regarding this issue. We will try providing more guidelines through our FAQ or user interface in the future.

Thanks a lot for your help explaining this matter to the Slowly community. Please let me know if I can be of your assistance.

Best regards,

J.

received : Feb 17, 10:00 GMT

And a Follow Up – Yann2 to Slowly Staff

Hello J.,

And thank you for the professional, detailed response to my inquiry, I really appreciate it. And as I mentioned, I will be preparing a topic for Reddit as well as a Blog post on this subject.

You really explained well how the reporting mechanism and the subsequent actions occur, which is great, thank you.

If the team could consider adding relevant sections to the detailed FAQ site it would be great – as we could point people there, or they might find them on their own when visiting and reading the site. Not everyone frequents or reads our subreddit, although I feel we do provide an important service to the user's community at large.

A couple of follow up questions :

1 – would you suggest that the reporting user should NOT use the 'Delete Forever' option in the offending user's letters? Would that action impede a subsequent investigation in any way?

I have recommended that people should NOT use that option, so they could retrieve any letter or portion they need, to respond to any Slowly support correspondence.

2 – Does the moderation team provide the reporting user a message back stating what they decided to do, or if the offending user was removed, etc? I have not received this in the past when reporting some clearly spammy accounts, but in that case it did not matter much to me.

In cases of harassment or aggressive users, sexual materials, I feel that this feedback from the Team members would be reassuring to the offended user – we have a lot of young users, and specially the young ladies seem to be much more exposed to this kind of undesirable 'attention'.

3 – Regarding some cases when there was a user request to share erotic toned letters, and subsequently things escalated to uncomfortable levels. We had a recent topic exactly on this subject.

The topic's author was rude and I ended up locking the thread to any new comments. He basically wanted to rant at Slowly support for removing his account, due to his most recent letter offending the recipient, and having been reported. I imagine he went beyond what the recipient agreed to, and shocked the young lady in question, leading to a report.

...[ some content edited for privacy ]...

Thank you again, J.

Have a great evening and week!

Yann2.

sent : Feb 17 13:30 GMT

Follow Up Response, from : Slowly Staff to Yann2

Hi Yann,

Please excuse me for giving brief replies below, as I think our team needs a thorough discussion before providing more proper, official answers.

1 – The letter records will remain in our moderation system even if the user uses “Delete Forever”. So, it will not affect our internal investigation. Yet, it is good to keep your own record by not deleting the user forever if you want to have any follow-ups in the future.

2 – The reporting user will not receive any message or decision regarding their report now, but we will consider this enhancement in future updates.

3 – Thank you for the information. I have saved this post for internal reference. I think the feedback from the poster and commenters can be a good reference for improving Slowly.

Thank you again, Yann. Feel free to contact us if you have further questions.

Best regards, J.

received : Feb 18, 7:36 GMT

Quick Thank you reply, from Yann2 to Slowly Staff

Wonderful, J. – once again you took the time to respond well to a complex query, and I really appreciate it.

Your answer above is fine, I will add it to the discussion topic we have ongoing for this subject.

The previous letter I sent you and your detailed reply really clarified how Reporting works – and advanced our understanding. It was well recieved by the users on Reddit. I am glad if the team can consider the comments and suggestions.

Thanks again, have a good weekend! 😃

sent : Feb 18, 14:30 GMT

This post will be updated

...if I receive a response to the questions outlined above.

Hope this is helpful – and please feel free to post comments or suggestions, which we could consider and bring to Slowly Staff's attention possibly. (They also read our subreddit, although they never post)

Thank you... 👍🙂

EDIT : Feb 18, 2022. Adding Slowly team's reply to my Follow Up letter and questions, my brief thank you note to them.

Famous Last Words

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