RESOLVED: Cheers and Taunts now provide Step Differences

[BLLingg]

This morning, I cheered my 55 Active FitFriends. I got back some weird replies. In order of appearance, they included the following:

 
#1) FitFriend Cheer: "cheered you! You're only 150,174 steps behind!"
#2) FitFriend Message: lol..yep that's will be easy to get to 😂
#3) FitFriend Cheer: "cheered you! You're 38,563 steps ahead!
I was getting very confused untll
#4) FitFriend Message: "When did Fitbit add, # of steps ahead, to cheers from others? I haven't gotten any cheers from one ahead of me yet. Is it motivating in your opinion?"

Later on, after several Messages, FitFriend #1 messaged back: "Brunetta, I seriously have no clue what you are talking about. I didn’t say anything to you other than clicking on cheers😳"
After several more Messages, he messaged back: "Hmm! It doesn’t say that on mine. Must be an Android thing then"

Those 150,174 Steps that were, I presume, intended to motivate me did not! Right now, I'm at 165,436 for the past SEVEN DAYS! How motivating is it to be told that you have to do almost as many Steps in presumably a few hours that it took you to get in an entire Week?

Worse yet, among those I cheered is one who is already insecure and if she has Android or uses her PC, she was told that she is only 156,515 Steps behind me.

I am mad. I am embarrassed. I feel guilty of having likely offended some of my FitFriends by appearing to brag. I am disgusted. I am not a braggart. I am neither a Sadist or a Masochist. I have never even intentionally taunted anyone. Until this is fixed, I can no longer cheer anyone. Friend #4 says that he feels ok cheering those who are ahead of him or very close behind him, but I would feel almost as guilty if I cheered only a few of my FitFriends!!!

Moderator edit: format

[sandycrochet]

Well who knew, never noticed this option before.

[CityLion]

It has been confirmed by @BLLingg that  "Passed / Passed by Notifications" have been removed.  Is there enough interest to have a new topic?  I suspect  "Passed / Passed by Notifications" disappearing and the "Cheer" becoming comparative are related in Fitbit development. Perhaps a iterative and excessively intensive batch process was eliminated and the comparative cheer/taunt was someone's misguided idea, of a good idea, to keep the motivation experience available without considering the actual demotivating impact of the change. 

[wizzywig]

Please change our cheers back to the way they were, friendly hello's.  We are not all young twenty somethings who are in it to compete with each other. 

Some Fitbit users have health issues and are using Fitbit as a way to get healthy, imagine if that was the case and you received a "Cheer" saying you were only so many THOUSAND STEPS behind, how would that make you feel, when you are physically unable to do any more.

Please change it back! 

[sandycrochet]

Right on the mark, thank you for saying that.

[Valkyrienz]

@Valkyrienz  Moved your post here to where is is being discussed so you could follow it.

It doesn't have anything to do with the device but it is a Dashboard problem

Hopefully it will get resolved soon

__________________________

Thanks Wendy, yes I hope so, I don't like the Taunts in the first place but at least you can choose not to use them, but this new cheer is just not good... so now they are not being used either...

Valkyrienz

[CherylWB]

Hello fellow fit bitters, I also do not like this change.  I use the cheer to say hi to friends, to encourage them and be friendly, do not like the bullying and/or taunting of saying I am so many steps ahead or behind.  I think Fitbit should have left the cheers alone and not added step differential.  Even the "taunts" between friends could be taken in jest!  Fitbit please return to the old Cheer, just an encouraging Smiley Face!

[CherylWB]

Sylvia, please have them remove step differentials in cheers, many of  us use it as a form of encouragement, or I am thinking of you, hello.  If this can't be removed, let us unable the step differential part so only the smily face gets sent.  I am no longer cheering friends because of this.  You already have a taunt, put the step differential there for those that like to bully people.

[CityLion]

CityLion Cheered you Fitbit! "Keep it up!" Your recent change is a decided improvement! Taunt comparison seems useful as well to me.  Thanks for helping us to yell, well! 

[CityLion]

Fitbit, CityLion cheered you. "Keep it up!"

I think the step comparison in the Taunt might be useful at times too.

Thanks for helping to yell, well!

😀👏🙌👍

[CarlosCFitbit]

Hi all! Some of you might already be aware, but I thought I'd chime in here to update all of you with some good news!

We've rolled out a change in cheer notification behavior. Here is a breakdown of what the new user experiences is when cheering: 

• If you are cheered by a user that is more than 10k steps ahead of you, you'll receive a message that says something like, "Carlos cheered you! Keep up the great work!"
• If you are cheered by another user that is less than 10k steps ahead of you, you will see "Carlos cheered you! You're only 9,000 steps behind!"
• If you're cheered and you're ahead, the step count difference will show regardless of how large the difference is
• If you're taunted and you're behind or ahead, the step count difference will show regardless of the difference

I appreciate everyone's feedback regarding cheers. Your concerns were taken into account and some changes have been made based on the input provided by all of you. Thanks everyone!

[BruceBu]

<deleted - changed my mind, the 'fix' is not sufficient>

[sandycrochet]

Do not agree that this is a solution.  When you're cheering someone you're cheering them on their accomplishment, it shouldn't be compared to you in anyway.  It's not about you, it's about cheering them.  This doesn't serve a good purpose.  You already have the taunt for those that like to boast their own accomplishments.  The cheer as a cheer is encouraging.  It helps people on a bad day, it says hello.  It tells people you are thinking about them.  None of those positive things get done when you tell someone they are behind you.  I am disgusted that this was considered a solution.  I will sadly, continue to NOT be able to cheer people.  From time to time I'll try to post messages, but I won't reach the number of people in the same way I did once or twice a week, simply by cheering everyone.  Everyone I've talked to about this is unhappy, many are apologizing as they see they are still being bullies when that is not their intent. 

I cheer people who get their steps using their walkers, some use canes. To do any comparison with my being ahead of them is repulsive and very insensitive.   Some are battling cancer and use walking as a means to fight their depression, others to fight nausea from chemo.  They most certainly do not need to be taunted in anyway!!  Some are limited by recent surgeries who appreciate a cheer because today they took 300 steps more than yesterday...........again they do not need to be taunted because I'm 9,999 steps ahead of them.

STOP THE BULLYING!!

[sandycrochet]

Sorry I don't agree

[BruceBu]

@sandycrochet  I thought the change was an improvement, but you are right! Fitbit has hijacked our 'Cheers' and made them specifically about steps, when we might be intending to cheer about something totally unrelated, e.g., 'I hope you are recovering from your injury', 'Sorry your dog and favorite walking partner died', or 'hope the chemo is working'.. The only concession Fitbit has made is to refrain from being insulting if you are more than (a completely arbitrary) 10k steps ahead of the recipient, and adds a message of ilk 'keep up the good work', which still may not be appropriate - it would kind of negate the intent of 'sorry your dog died, hope you cheer up'. Even though I applauded the change, I return to my prior position - OK for 'taunts' and the people that use them, but hijacking of 'Cheers' should be made optional through personal settings, if not eliminated completely.

I realize that implementing this in place of the "you passed person X / person Y passed you by Z steps" system - which was clearly a Fitbit, not personal, message and was usefully relevant to changing positions on a leaderboard - might save a  little Fitbit server processing time, but that is part of the reason we pay the inflated device prices - for the community services. You should be improving, not streamlining.

[BruceBu]

@CarlosCFitbit did you (or another moderator) remove the message from Bosco253. If so, I think the normal procedure is to remove some of the all-caps. Otherwise it was a valid message - if you deleted it just because you didn't like it . . .

[Bosco253]

This is not an acceptable "fix." Fitbit needs to listen to its users. You have heard many people weigh in, the majority of them stating that they find the step comparisons to be offensive and insensitive, at least in some instances. Fitbit's response is that they are going to continue force us to rub people's faces in the fact that they are "behind" us, but only if it is less than 10,000 steps behind. Again, you need to listen to users. Most of them are saying that they DO NOT LIKE THIS FEATURE.

While it is true that some people may be motivated by taunting and good-natured teasing, step counts with cheers do not take into account that there may be some people we would wish to engage in this sort of teasing, but others we would wish to leave out. One of my FB friends is someone who formerly logged a half-million or more steps per week, far more than myself. Following injury, she isn't yet making 10K a day. I do not send her cheers now, because it looks like "Haha - who's having trouble keeping up with whom NOW!" In fact, unbeknownst to me, I most likely had been sending that message when you made the change without informing users.

Some people have hailed the change to limiting the bullying to only those within 10,000 steps as movement in the right direction. This is "a step in the right direction" only in the same manner as the bully who decides that he is only going to steal lunch money from the kids in his own grade level instead of also stealing from those who are younger.

I implore Fitbit to revisit their "solution," as it is actually not a solution at all.

[Bosco253]

The message from me about this not being an acceptable "fix" is the one that had been deleted. The message may have been lost in an edit attempt; I'll not make an accusation that it was intentionally removed, although I do wonder how and why it got "lost."

[Bosco253]

btw - My caps were intentional, for effect.

[sandycrochet]

Thanks for reposting.

[Bosco253]

By the way, I disagree with the assertion that this matter has been "SOLVED" or is an "Accepted Solution," as the green tags on Carlos's reply indicates. The taunting/bullying aspects of attaching step count differentials to cheers have merely been lessened (an only to a very minor degree), not alleviated.

You might be interested in knowing that one of the forum threads in one of my Fitbit communities is entitled "Fitbit The New Bully?"

While I (and others, I presume) appreciate that moderators and/or management have responded to concerns, please don't continue to operate under then false assumption that your changes have satisfactorily addressed the problems, because they have not. Please, please listen to what users (YOUR CUSTOMERS) are telling you.

The negative aspects of pointing out that our friends are "behind" us remain. I hope that other respondents reinforce what I am telling you.