"Thank you for inviting me onto your browser" - Personal v Public spaces online

[Melooon]

Back in the old days when someone appeared on your TV they would say something like "Thank you for inviting me into your living rooms", it was a nice way to acknowledge that they may be a strange face appearing within your home. I really feel that way about websites and online videos too.

When I visit a site or watch a video, that's a choice to invite that person, or the thing they create, onto my computer and I very much expect them to behave themselves while they are here 

Particularly with videos, I really don't enjoy it when a stranger appears in the video, that's very in-appropriate! I invited a particular person onto my computer and now they are showing up with strange people I don't know If friends did that in real life you would not want to invite them over anymore.

So I spend a lot of time when Im creating pages thinking about how visitors are going to feel about that page, is it a personal space or a public one, and what sort of things are appropriate because of that.

Sites can have all sorts of personalities within them, the author is of course one personality, and OCs on the site are like abstractions of the author; but I also feel that UI elements have personalities, buttons become like people you know, and old layouts are like old friends.

This all comes to mind because the new nav bar is a stranger here, and I've been thinking about what spaces its appropriate for it to appear within, and what places it should not appear. On TamaNotchi for example, I don't think its ok for mr Nav to appear because that site is its own world even though most people in this world know about it.

ANYWAY, all of that is a ramble to ask, how do you feel about the presence of people and new things online, on sites, in community spaces and on youtube. What kind of spaces are you ok to encounter strangers, and what kind of spaces do you expect to be more personal?

[stellarfieldanomaly]

I have never thought of it that way, but thinking on it I realize I do get annoyed when videos I'm watching have unexpected crossovers. Some of that annoyance is probably frustration at the resulting dilution of style, but some of the rest is surely the unexpected addition of someone I'm not familiar with or did not seek out.

As for more participatory parts of the internet (social media, forums, chats etc), with the exception of private chats between friends I don't really feel there is much of an expectation of privacy. Back in my tumblr days there were often huge blow up drag out flame wars that the inciting spark being someone being extremely annoyed that a post they had made had received attention they didn't want, often claiming it was a personal rant or not intended for the wider public. What always struck me as odd, was that these people never seemed to take any of the steps the site offered to restrict access to these posts and many would tag them with popular tags that almost guaranteed visibility. Maybe this was all a nascent form of engagement baiting.. 

All that is to say, I personally feel like encountering strangers is largely the point of public spaces on the net. If someone didn't want to encounter strangers they'd spend their time in private spaces, or lurk in the public ones with a privated account.

Leaving aside people to focus on UI and software changes, I am largely of the opinion that positive software changes are never strangers, just new friends. Negative software changes however feel almost like a home invasion. Someone came into your device/software/website and broke something or stole something or moved things around when you were gone. I don't like feeling gaslit by my software personally.

I like the new navbar though, it's polite and unobtrusive. Adds functionality without removing any. New friend. 

[lakes]

I personally see unexpected video crossovers, usually as a chance to find a new creator, unless the new person is annoying.
However I do sympathize with the analogy being used here. Everything in our rooms IS our personal space and that includes our computer. That's why the art of curating our own experiences on here is important. We need to curate who we let have access to our virtual "homes." I used to be scared of blocking people because I was worried about people assuming why I blocked them, since I'd see that constantly on social media. However now that I'm not on social media anymore, I'm more willing to block people when they cross a line for me.
I also agree that this applies to negative changes to software & websites made by services. It's like if someone you didn't know just redecorated your apartment, did a terrible job, and then charged you for it.