Sphere - Acquired by Twitter 🌐

[AlanDoe (Alan)]

Look forward to the future updates @simonb

@Peter_G

It feels like this has taken a bit of an unfortunate turn.

Could I ask everyone to familiarise themselves with the Code of Conduct.

Please avoid the temptation to make things personal (the code of conduct is explicit on “ad hominem attacks (criticising a poster personally, not their post”). Instead, if anyone thinks that something is inappropriate, please use the flagging system to alert Monzo staff.

I’m going to close this topic for a bit now. When it reopens, please keep the conversation on Sphere - not this message and not individuals’ motivations for posting. As I say, those are issues for Monzo staff: @AlanDoe’s inbox is open for that. As a community volunteer, and not a member of staff, unfortunately I cannot help with that.

This post from Peter is spot on and if you want you can message me directly. There’s been posts on the Topic which Simon has taken the time to reply to - which is great.

Simon isn’t just going to expect fully positive responses and he’s actively seeking feedback but if we can make sure that we edge towards it being constructive then that would be greatly appreciated by all.

[Peter_G]

A reminder: this is not the place to discuss flags or to bring back topics of conversation that led to the topic being closed.

Thank you!

[anon75400416]

Maybe you could be more specifc about what we can talk about. You’ve deleted every single post for the last few days and keep closing this down, I’m at a loss now it seems unless we’re praising sphere the posts get deleted

As I am sure this is about to be deleted too

[Peter_G]

I’ll tackle a few of these for clarity, but I’m afraid this is for information rather than discussion:

@anon75400416

Maybe you could be more specifc about what we can talk about.

The code of conduct is available to read. Stay within it and there will be no problems.

@anon75400416

You’ve deleted every single post for the last few days

This is not true. I have removed one post which was about flagging rather than Sphere. I moved a bunch of off-topic posts about a different product (Potato IM) to a separate topic.

@anon75400416

I’m at a loss now it seems unless we’re praising sphere the posts get deleted

This is untrue. I don’t have a particularly strong view either way on Sphere. What is unacceptable is the conflation of critique of the product (which is understandable) with what the code of conduct calls “ad homenem attacks” (which it defines as “criticising a poster personally”).

@Neil0

Does that include discussion of encryption for the product or the product’s purpose and placement? As they seem to be the main things which have been discussed.

I hope the explanation above explained why it was closed. Let me quote my previous post where I tried to make that clear:

@Peter_G

I’m going to close this topic for a bit now. When it reopens, please keep the conversation on Sphere - not this message and not individuals’ motivations for posting.

If anyone has any concerns about the way I’ve handled this, please speak to @AlanDoe privately. If you have concerns about moderation in general, you can always open a separate topic to discuss that (although accusations or concerns about specific individuals must always happen privately).

[DaveJ (Dave)]

@simonb

We are planning a Sphere discussion event on this very topic in the coming weeks, so we’d love to see you there! We will be exploring both sides of the debate, so please feel free to attend once we’ve posted details on it.

They’ll be a full discussion soon over at Sphere, see what pros and cons this brings up.

[Revels]

I think I expect a messaging app to be E2EE if I have a choice to use it.

Teams/Zoom/Slack that you use at work, I’m not going to discuss anything that I wouldn’t care if my boss looks at. And I understand Slack are open with it for fear of workplace bullying etc. I have no problem with that, I know from the outset and I consider it the same as my work emails, at anytime these could be read by the company.

But Sphere doesn’t seem to want to be Slack. It wants to be a better WhatsApp, so you’re not going to “force” me to use it (like in a work place) so I’ll likely pick something else that has better privacy protocols.

[Peter_G]

I’ve spun out a bunch of non Sphere related (but very interesting) posts on end to end encryption over here:

https://community.monzo.com/t/end-to-end-encryption-of-messaging-apps/114942

Let’s keep Sphere specific stuff here, the general stuff over there!

[simonb]

@Revels

I think I expect a messaging app to be E2EE if I have a choice to use it.

Teams/Zoom/Slack that you use at work, I’m not going to discuss anything that I wouldn’t care if my boss looks at. And I understand Slack are open with it for fear of workplace bullying etc. I have no problem with that, I know from the outset and I consider it the same as my work emails, at anytime these could be read by the company.

But Sphere doesn’t seem to want to be Slack. It wants to be a better WhatsApp, so you’re not going to “force” me to use it (like in a work place) so I’ll likely pick something else that has better privacy protocols.

This is all very fair - thank you for posting!

Where I think it can be challenged, is the existence (and popularity of) Discord. This is a service that people are not forced to use, they choose to use. This is a service that is not E2EE, because it is aimed at facilitating communities. One obvious example is that it’s hard to facilitate a community when every new member can’t see anything posted from before they joined (which is what happens in an E2EE environment).

This is a closer comparison to what we are trying to build, even if right now, our positioning, messaging and even UX aren’t yet making that super clear - there are large projects happening in all of those areas currently, and at tonight’s event, we’ll be showing UI mockups that will begin to make this more clear.

[MalaiseForever (Ethan)]

You talk about integrating messaging and events a lot and compare Sphere to Discord. What if discord adds events to its platform?

[simonb]

@MalaiseForever

What if discord adds events to its platform?

That would be incredible validation that people are seeing the same thing we’re seeing.

@N26throwaway

I hope you guys remain open to discussion and feedback on this, and consider deeply about changing your stance, and seriously explore the possibility from a practical standpoint.

Absolutely - everything is up for discussion and debate all the time. I think there’s a world in which you have the public/community “channels” environments which are not E2EE for the purposes of facilitating community, but you also have DM elements (1 to 1) which are, because they don’t have the same issues (such as the one I identified about new users being unable to see previous discussion).

It’s not necessarily a binary issue, and it ultimately depends on the feature set. For example, it’s hard to see how we could expand the events feature that we have in the way that we want to do (public facing pages that allow RSVPs from non-app users) and have it be E2EE, but that’s not necessarily the case with every feature we might build in the future.

[simonb]

The simplest answer is that we only came out of stealth at the end of 2020. Prior to December, we had no forum, no social media, no blog, no external comms at all. And quite a lot of our current direction was still being finalised conceptually, developed and built. Our two current Product Leads only joined in January, and have been pivotal in shaping this stuff.

Everything that I posted in this thread prior to December was pretty much the only information shared publicly - that and what was in the TechCrunch piece (which mostly just pulled from the App Store listing). And a lot of stuff inside the company was being reshaped at that time.

I’m personally committed to transparency, but at the same time, there’s a reason we are in private beta. It’s so that we get all our ducks in a row before a public/open launch. Previous thinking was that building in public is incompatible with being a private beta where a lot can and will change. I personally don’t believe that to be the case.

[simonb]

That’s correct! We had a great event tonight where our Product Lead showed the direction and we’ll be sharing some of the mockups over the next few weeks as the stuff gets built - there’s a lot coming, some parts already built and shipping over the next month, others being built over the next few months. We are all very excited about it

[simonb]

Yes! The event will be on Tuesday. Would be great to see anyone there that is up for discussing this.

Encryption: How can we solve for both safety and privacy in communities? - Zoom

[simonb]

Hey everyone Thought you might be interested to know that we’re holding our first ever Sphere Hackathon next week! We’ve split the company into 5 multi-disciplinary teams, cancelled all meetings and the only goal is that each team ship something new to our app by next Friday

On Friday, we’re holding a community event where all the teams will give a short presentation/demo of what they’ve shipped, and the attendees will pick a winner! So if you want to see what happens when a bunch of community tech nerds get unleashed to build and ship quickly, join us at the event and help us pick a winner

RSVP: http://lu.ma/spherehackathon2021

[Revels]

Do the Mr Men know they are on your graphics?

[Rat_au_van (Em)]

Mr Horrific-incident-involving-industrial-machinery in the top right