Add global option to disable online presence indicators

Could you please add an option to globally remove online indicators for users? I actually also don’t want these indicators :nerd_face:

Ignore this stuff about GDPR please, I was wrong

To be compliant with the GDPR, could you please add an option to globally remove online indicators for users?

  • ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;

Art. 4 GDPR – Definitions - General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

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Online indicator has nothing to do with GDPR. If you don’t want it, it is another story and the easiest way is… not to use it. Situation where you allow it on forum-level but not in chat is just weird.

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I think you misunderstand the text. This is not an indicator that says 'AquaL1te is online at the moment`, it’s an IP address (or, depending on the application, a cookie, an RFID tag, MAC-address or IMEI-number).

Natural persons may be associated with online identifiers provided by their devices, applications, tools and protocols, such as internet protocol addresses, cookie identifiers or other identifiers such as radio frequency identification tags. This may leave traces which, in particular when combined with unique identifiers and other information received by the servers, may be used to create profiles of the natural persons and identify them.

See (30) in L_2016119EN.01000101.xml

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Our assumption is that within the context of chat, it’s generally helpful to know whether folks are present or not, since it’s a more synchronous form of communication.

It seems reasonable that the “Hide my public profile and presence features” should also apply to chat, but we haven’t done that yet and are thinking through the implications of this and what kind of reciprocity should be implied with presence features in chat.

I don’t know that we’ll make the ability to disable presence site-wide a feature. But if you really want to use chat and globally hide presence on your site, you may be able to work around this with some CSS.

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Since chat is on the forum, it’s a bit strange to mix it with online indicators. I also have the who’s online plugin enabled. But configured it to only show a counter, no names. To not give anyone any expectations of replies. I prefer to keep this info from the community and not give people the feeling of disappointment or frustration if someone doesn’t reply “fast enough” while being online.

So as mentioned, I’ve disabled usernames for this.

But if someone opens the chat, then someone can see who’s online. That’s rather inconsistent. Please consider to add this global option to disable online indicators. I suppose it’s up to the communities to enable or disable them.

Completely hiding a user profile is then again a bit extreme. My profile is fine for others to see, just not my online presence, and that of others.

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As a workaround for now you can override this CSS property to not show the green glow:

.chat-user-avatar.is-online .chat-user-avatar-container .avatar {
    box-shadow: none !important;
}
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