Multiple identities per account

[gdude2002]

This is a pretty specific request, so bear with me.

Summary

On Discord, there's an ecosystem of bots that exist purely to resend messages using a different username or avatar. Because Discord has no native support for this, they use webhooks - so they appear as follows:

This post proposes adding a system for multiple identities per account to Revolt, while the systems are still new and malleable.

Rationale

There are two major groups I have in mind with this feature.

1. Plural systems

For those that aren't aware, there exists a subset of the population that are known as plural systems. This term is used to describe people with pluralities - multiple people within one body, so to speak. If you're not familiar with the concept, feel free to take a look at this primer. Members of plural systems are sometimes called "alters", if you're already familiar with that term.

Plurality tools like the bots I've mentioned above are a key point of comfort and communication for members of plural systems. They allow each individual member to interact with an avatar and name of their own, which means they're not constrained to a single identity. However, Discord doesn't go far enough, here - there are strict rate limits on nickname and avatar changes (which would already be incredibly burdensome, especially given how fast switches can happen and the fact that there may be multiple members chatting at once), and no built-in identity system.

A properly integrated solution is something Revolt could break ground on here, and it would be a massive bonus for all plural systems.

2. Roleplayers

Another common use for bots like those I've mentioned above is for role-playing servers. As you can probably tell, having multiple identities available at the push of a button would be extremely convenient.

Niche use-cases

I could also envision other use-cases here, such as staff members using separate identities for personal and official communications - I'm sure there are other possibilities.

Concept

There are many ways this could be exposed in the frontend. I'll leave the configuration side of this to the community and developers, but I've had a couple of ideas on how the UX might look:

You can probably tell I'm not a graphic designer, haha

[Yu-Vitaqua-fer-Chronos]

Personally we like the third option, with multiple identities! There are plenty of times where me and someone else are co-fronting and want to say a similar thing, so we send one message, but it's frustrating where it seems like only one of us is actually talking when we're both wanting to get our say

[Saragon4005]

Extending this to also have shared identities sort of like organization accounts would be a niche but appreciated feature, especially for official communications.

[Tinkerpaw]

Definitely agree there, as that feature was extremely useful on telegram so administrators could use a shared alias for announcements and the like.

[Robo-Fortune]

Very much agreed! This would be immensely helpful.

[luka-devnull]

another thing this would probably be immensely useful for: bridge bots. it'd be a lot nicer from the revolt side of things vs abusing webhooks for it because unlike webhooks a bot could create multiple identities that don't have to be reused for every message like a webhook is. also: identities could include better information about where the bridged user is coming from and which bot is doing the bridging without showing it in the main message (also unlike webhooks)

also there's also a whole slew of discord bots that have all kinds of silly minigames and whatnot, can def see huge potential in them being able to spawn new identities for whatever sort of things people can come up with

[gdude2002]

That's fascinating, I hadn't considered bots in my original proposal. Strongly agree though, no doubt this would be extremely useful.

[Saragon4005]

I've always imagined bridges to be more native then bots but still use a system like webhooks, this would work just as well it not better because this would allow more modularity. It also solves the issue of bots like this being basically unmoderatable. Making a setting for requesting different identities to be treated like different user accounts would help with moderation bots, although it might still be a bit problematic, unless each identity is granted a different ID, maybe based off the original if that doesn't conflict with the spec?

[onpon4]

We would very much like this feature too! Would be even better than PluralKit since it could be made to apply to DMs.

🕵️

[FreshAlacrity]

Absolutely yes - that would be huge! It would also help with messages bouncing up and down since they wouldn't need to be deleted and reposted, and my system has at least one friend for whom that in particular is a major accessibility issue.

[greysdawn]

+1, have been bouncing around an idea for a discord-like app with this feature for a while now. Having an integrated way for users to post under aliases that still link back to the main account in a clear and easily accessible way is something I've been interested in since fiddling with roleplay forums as a kid, and as a plural person it's super handy for us

I'd be willing to help make this happen once I've got time to take a look at everything 👀

[FreshAlacrity]

Heck yeah! Hope you get the time to look into it 🎉

[IncandescenceSy]

This would be huge, it's everything we've ever wanted in a chat app, and would absolutely cement Revolt as the only choice for us and many others. Please, please do this!

[greysdawn]

We commented on this before, but for others interested: this is currently being worked on with the masquerade feature :D

As far as I know it's only available through the API but it should get added into the client as well

[Saragon4005]

As someone who has been dealing with systems more and more adding this would solve so many issues. PluralKit breaks so many features bots, search, not role permissions at least, but it does break visual roles. Having this be integrated into the main chat app would automatically solve all these issues.

[erkinalp]

This feature should be tightly coupled with permissions to control which user can use which identities, in a many to many fashion.

[gdude2002]

Strongly disagree - if one of the goals of this is to provide an accessibility tool, gatekeeping (at a permissions level) which identities may be used is contradictory.

As long as the UI makes it obvious which account the message is coming from, I think it should be fairly simple to moderate troublemakers, or - when the permissions system is more fleshed out - remove masquerade permissions from them.

[Rexogamer]

The ability to use masquerades (which are ultimately the implementation of this) can be controlled per-role/channel by enabling/disabling the Use Masquerades permission.

Masquerades are also user specific - they're not "shared", although nothing is stopping two users with the Use Masquerades permission from using the same name and profile picture.

[erkinalp]

@Rexogamer I meant something like user aliases which would allow things like posting a message in behalf of an institution (hence many to manyness), rather than masquerades.

[Rexogamer]

That seems, to me at least, to be a separate idea. As far as I can tell, this discussion is about personal masquerades - we may add shared masquerades, but for now shared accounts are the best available option for posting as an organisation and such.

[Tinkerpaw]

Reboosting this particular request, as the new username system makes this much easier to do.

[arisu0]

boosting this too, hope it gets added soon

[ghost]

this would be great! boosting as well

[Robo-Fortune]

This would be immensely helpful, I hope it makes it into the new client! If not, I plan to try to implement it myself anyways.

[sinnom]

This would be so so helpful to have! Hope this gets implemented.

[aprildoesthings]

We would really like to have a feature like this! It would help us when communicating with others so much!

[lunathir]

We think this would work very well, would prefer this over Discord's webhook function stuff

[sinnom]

Still very excited for this feature! I would also ask that it please be named something else, like "Proxies" or "Profiles" or "Display Profiles" or "Sub-Profiles". There's an unfortunate stereotype of systems and pluralfolk just "faking" or "pretending", and the name "Masquerades" unfortunately affirms that stereotype.

[Beethoven-n]

what repo should this be made an issue on?
this organization has 37 repos and i'm unfamiliar

[erkinalp]

revoltchat/backend

[Beethoven-n]

thanks bunches!

[viiuan]

pleeeease please can this be real someday so i can fully abandon discord <3

[alisticks]

as a system, HUGE want for this. would be awesome especially since im not aware of any revolt bots for this kind of thing

[FreshAlacrity]

https://github.com/Ninty9/RevoltKit has been working well for my system as an immediate/short-term work-around, but of course built-in support would be a huge quality of life improvement against anything else out there 👍

[remeranAuthor]

There are a lot of other pretty good use cases for such a feature in a professional capacity, such as a specific identity for server management announcements that is usable by all of the administrators, or a "serious mode" mod up mode like how IRC has.

[SixtyEmeralds]

If someone implemented this, I think my headmate and I could actually, finally commit to using a single account somewhere instead of our kludgy and muddy triggered response of having separate accounts. I don't want to mislead people as to who we are, it's just we take identity seriously, and don't feel comfortable posting on each other's accounts.

[and-rea]

I think when it's two people, it is correct use two separate accounts. You never know when you both go separate ways for any reason and the result is always a mess.
Multiple persona on same account maybe can have its use as some business account, as "support" account as example. But it is better handled with roles IMHO.

If i want my same account appear as two different persona, it is because:

1. privacy: I don't want other people to know I am the same persona in some different channels I prefer to keep alone;
2. roleplay: I can better represent my character in some game going on;

On Discord there is the distinct profiles per server but is behind a paywall and still doesn't solve the issue, as my account is still the same in both serveres even if profiles are dedicated.

[gdude2002]

This proposal doesn't really have anything to do with two separate people sharing an account, but realistically I'm sure a small handful of people will find it useful to do so - for example, perhaps parents might prefer to have a single account both their kids use so it's easier to monitor them.

The proposal was meant mostly with plural systems in mind, but I have to say, there are a lot of other potential use-cases too!

[IAmTomahawkx]

fwiw this is on our radar, but its unlikely to be coming in the near future due to some other stuff we're already in the works on. Keep up the suggestions/ideas for this.

[and-rea]

I had recently a little chat about this on the Revolt lounge, that ended up in a couple considerations that are imho worth mentioning here.

The first is about the question "why have multiple identities under the same account, when multiple accounts are allowed so you can make an account per identity?"
Looking at my own specifics needs (keeping private sets of joined channels, and roleplaying) it is in effect a good solution: if I want things be separated, I want two separate accounts.
On this view, I still have two concerns:

1. moving between accounts is not convenient: I have to go 'thru logoff and login processes. Discord solved this with the "account switch" feature, so I think this can be done here too;
2. premium features: Revolt sooner or later will have to launch monetization to pay the bills. If the premium is tied to the account, I will have to pay multiple times the same premium for the accounts I am using. One reason that wants me go away Discord is having moved their "nitro" features that made me sub there to an higer, more expensive "tier" and I now have canceled the sub. We all know, we pay these subs for fun and convenience, but we can live and breath even without. I surely are not willing to pay 3x times a sub. But, and this is more on the Revolt marketing guys, I am willing to condider more subs if I can have discounts when purchasing more, as happens in other places with license packs.

The second is, looking at other's needs, as "one identity, multiple people behind" as example the support staff of a given company, that have the "support" account but different people can be on call at a given time, I think a nice implementation can be the ability of "posting a message in behalf of", where an account can enable another account to post messages in its behalf. Ability can be enabled and revoked, and things seems will be quite easy and clean to maintain.
It is the same thing we see in some support sites and emails, we receive mails from [email protected] but each one has the operator who sent it, or the chat messages with sender "Greg (ACME Support)" in the "ACME Support" chat.
I don't pretend to say how to do it but I see it is possible.

[gdude2002]

This doesn't solve the problem as presented:

• Multiple accounts do not scale - One of the reasons I made this suggestion to begin with was to allow plural systems to properly integrate into the platform. These systems can sometimes have hundreds of members, and they can also sometimes be unstable, frequently requiring removing, updating and adding identities.
• Separate contexts can be detrimental - Many plural systems share their memories and social groups among all of their members, and setting up and maintaining a set of accounts for each member makes a lot of things difficult. For example, instead of joining a server on one account, now we need to join it with six!
• Complex use-cases aren't accounted for - Plural systems don't always have a single member "in front", and it's often useful to be able to specify multiple system members together when attributing the authors of a message.

While your approach solves some problems for non-plural folks, the feature as specified was designed with plural systems in mind, and the fact that it'd be useful for other people is a secondary upside.

If you're not familiar with plural systems, feel free to take a look at these sites: https://moderation.wiki/a/plurality and https://morethanone.info/

[gdude2002]

Oh, I forgot to mention, but I don't see why this couldn't still factor into a premium model - Revolt could certainly limit this to a certain number of identities, with the option to pay to raise the limit!

[and-rea]

This doesn't solve the problem as presented

Of course it doesn't, I only added some thoughts worth considering.

If you're not familiar with plural systems, feel free to take a look at these sites: https://moderation.wiki/a/plurality and https://morethanone.info/

Thank you for the links, they helped me focus more your issue. And yes, plural system may also help with my secondary upside.

[onpon4]

Having multiple accounts as a plural system would be completely untenable for someone like me as a plural system on a real-time chat app, or anywhere really

Consider DMs with friends, rather than just being able to message my account to contact me, they'd have the extra headache of having to predict which of us is fronting, and I'd have the hassle of looking at 2 separate DM lists, and then when my headmate fronts (which can very easily happen in the middle of a conversation) we'd have to start splitting up a single conversation into multiple different locations, possibly several times

🕷️

[ShiningVenus]

No I am all for this for roleplayers. I use Discord for roleplaying and I'd love a system or bot which is like Tupper or even does it better.

[DeclanChidlow]

Revolt has a masquerade feature which handles this quite nicely. There is a Revite plugin and plenty of bots that make it easy to use this functionality.

[gdude2002]

This is, in fact, the thread that resulted in Masquerade haha

It'd be nice to see it supported directly in the client though

[ShiningVenus]

Revolt has a masquerade feature which handles this quite nicely. There is a Revite plugin and plenty of bots that make it easy to use this functionality.

Oooh okay then. I figured there'd be a bot or some such for this.