User Deactivates; Their letters to you remain?

October 27, 2024

Departing users, removal requests

We haven't discussed this as far as i know, and it is an interesting question.

The letters we wrote, the responses we got, all of those are significant for people who enjoy corresponding with pen pal friends.

And then, sometimes things happen. Your friend decides to leave, for various reasons. A common one being to reduce 'distractions', being busy and needing to fully focus in something important.

They decide to depart. And press the button on their Slowly client, the one that talks back and asks, Are you Sure?

And likely they confirm.

Slowly staff say that user's data will be removed as requested. But they wisely keep it around – for 30 days, giving users an opportunity to change their minds. If they do, they can resume, and nothing gets lost.

But in many cases, users turn their backs and move on. They cannot access their data, and assume that after 30 days it is gone for sure.

Or is it?

Turns out the recipient of their letters get to keep them. I can verify this as I had dear friends depart and I still keep many folders with lots of letters we exchanged.

I think we all assume this is how it should be? In the real world, if you wrote and mailed a letter, it is gone and you cannot edit it, delete it, or claim ownership of it as a physical object.

You wrote, addressed and paid postage to get that object to someone, somewhere. They get to keep it, as personal property.

I imagine the original writer has copyright on the letter content, as its creator. But they could not reasonably request that all of their mailed letters be destroyed without trace by the recipients, could they?

I asked Microsoft's Copilot and got a nice answer.

In Slowly, how are these questions dealt with?

We had some serious discussions about Slowly and Privacy concerns in the past. I made a Guest Author blog post with an excellent document posted here on Reddit, with the author's permission, and it is one of the most popular pages on my blog.

All of our Slowly data is stored in 'cloud servers', rented online servers currently provided by Amazon Web Services, aka AWS.

We have two users in contact in a pen pal relationship. Person A, who writes a letter, and person B who is the intended recipient of that letter,

If person A decides to leave, pushes the kill button and confirms, their data is assumed to be deleted (after the 30 days grace period). Person A loses access to the service, and to their sent and received letters.

But what about the letter's recipient?

As far as I know, they get to keep it. As I mentioned above, it happened to me, people left and I still have our letters in full, sent and received.

Is this a problem? or do we consider the electronic messages/letters to be similar to the written pages we receive in the mail – and were we surely have an ownership?

What do you think?

This is a new discussion, and I decided to make a new topic so it gets to be seen, and maybe more people participate.

In your opinion, is the current situation as it should be?

Or no, a user requesting deletion should assume their sent letters will disappear as well?

I look forward to reading your comments and thoughts. Thank you!

Famous Last Words

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

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