Conflict & Reconciliation Feature for Social Networks - A Proposal

 Subject Matter & Problem

In the course of interactions among human beings, there arises, perhaps inadvertently and perhaps otherwise, that one or more parties take offense or are made angry by the utterances or behavior of another party or parties.  Human societies, historically, have developed mechanism to cope with social friction among the members, limit its negative consequences, and to facilitate reconciliation among the affected parties.

Virtual communities and social networks such as Facebook, Google Groups, etc. are novel ways of human interactions and group formation which are based on computer and information technologies.  However, they are not immune to the occurrences of social friction among their members and the attendant issues of anger management and reconciliation among “warring” parties.  Facebook, for example, offers a binary choice between a “Friend” and “Un-Friend”; one may “Un-Friend” a “Friend” if one has been angered – or otherwise disappointed – by that person.   There is no intermediate state between a “Friend” and “Un-Friend” which could distinguish among total strangers in contradistinction to former friends and acquaintances who could, when one’s anger cools, become one’s friends again.

Solution

The gist of this solution is to endow the social networking sites and virtual communities with a feature to mediate and affect a reconciliation among former friends and acquaintances beyond the binary choice of “Friend” and “Un-Friend” and to further facilitate the resolution of the conflict through selected “Intercessors”.

Use Case 1 – Normal Use

• The user navigates to a screen that contains a list of his contacts.
• He selects one or more of them and designates them as: “Not on Speaking Terms”, or “Sulking”, or “Furious” or some such phrase (or its equivalent in other languages).  That is, he sets their “Conflict” status.
• The system updates their profiles accordingly.
• The system displays the text above and an appropriate icon that indicates that these individuals have been thus designated as being in “Conflict” with this or that user.

This will be visible to all.

This designation is not conceived to be equivalent to “Un-Friend”.

• The user could further designate a time period for that status: from “Never Expires” to a date and time range (either selectable from a screen widget or entered manually by the user).
• The user may optionally decide if he wants to block communication from the “Conflict” contacts.
• The system will notify those contacts of a change in their status.

That communication could be in the form of email, internal communication, text messages, phone calls etc. – together with an appropriate text message.

• The system will notify others who share the affected contacts with the user and are also in the user’s social network of the “conflict” status change above.
• When the “Conflict” status time interval expires, the system reverts the status to “Friend”.

 Use Case 2 – User Selected Intercessor Option

• The user could further designate one or more “Intercessors” for each and any of the affected contacts from among their common contacts.
• The role of “Intercessor”, should they accept it, would be to try to mediate and resolve the conflict among the affected parties within the stated period of the conflict.
• This is an option that the user may or may not exercise.
• The system will query the “Intercessors” through a possible multiplicity of communication channels if they consent to play that role (for conflict resolution and mediation).
• If the “Intercessor” agrees, the system will notify the user who had initially requested the help of the “Intercessor” as well as the affected “Conflict” contacts.

4.       It is up to the “Intercessor” then to initiate the process of reconciliation.

Use case 3 – User elects to be “Intercessors”

Optionally, any user may elect to be an available as an “Intercessor” in a social network or virtual community.

Use case 4 – System Recommends “Intercessors”

Optionally, the system recommends a list of available “Intercessors” to the user.

Use case 5 – “Conflict” contact looks for an “Intercessors”

Optionally, the system recommends a list of available “Intercessors” to a “Conflict” contact after the system has informed him of the change in his “Conflict” status by another user.

Description

This is envisioned as a software add-on to existing as well as new social networking sites and virtual communities.  The operation of the invention is described in the above use cases.

Advantages

The chief advantage of this invention is that it enables one to retain one's "Friends" in social network even when one is cross with them. To wit, one announces publicly that he is cross with this or that person, others take note of it, and depending on the desire of both sides and their own inclinations could help them reconcile. So one does not necessarily wind up losing one's friend in a network due to a temporary emotional outburst or state of anger.

System Architecture & Design

The architecturally significant components of the system are illustrated below:

 

Possible Modifications

Something analogous to this may be incorporated into email clients – a “conflict” icon or button in which enables a user to designate one or some of his/her contacts as “In Conflict” until further notice.  The email server can then alert the person so designated of the change in his/her status by another user.  Optionally, all members of a person’s social network could be advised of the status.  Furthermore, the email client can expire the status and revert it back to “Friend” at a designated date and time (by the user).  Likewise, the email client or the email server could, for the duration, junk or otherwise archive email messages from such users.

 This invention could be extended to text messaging systems as well and with a suitable emoji.