Chatbox visibility set to Friends by default is really unfair for vocally disabled people and inconsist with voice settings which lets everyone hear everyone by default unless they explicitly mute specific users or use safe mode. It's frustrating when people can't see your message when they can hear other people speak to them. Voice and chatbox usability should be equivalent.

The pros of having it on for everyone by default massively outweigh the cons.

just make chatbox exactly like voices. individual muting option and always on by default. add to safety settings ability to mute by rank like voices. super simple.

VRChat defaults to letting me hear everyone, so the decision to make chatboxes default to "Friends" seems like a really confusing choice. Would also be nice to have a different setting for "chat" vs "system" messages. chat should default to everyone and system default to friends or better yet, off.

By chat I am referring to messages typed/sent via osc with the final parameter set to true (the one which controls if the sound plays). This would allow people to hide all the messages showing currently playing songs/current local time or weather/whatever but still see when a mute user is talking.

I'm not sure what the argument AGAINST this is. It seems like a major win for accessibility to have Everyone be the default.

I got catched by this too.

Two days ago played VRC from different PC. Haven't seen chat boxes, until realized on that PC I didn't configured privacy enough to see chat boxes.

110% this. The communities I help in explain how to enable this in newbie events, but there’s so many people who use the chat box to type who may have not been to one of those and it takes finding out through the grapevine that someone doesn’t know they need to show the chat box. It would be so much simpler to explain how to turn it off for folks who don’t want it than explaining to 40+ people how to turn on the chat box every week.

It is insanely hostile to users with disabilities and anxiety conditions to have the chat-box visibility setting configured to hide text messages from non-friends by default, when voice users have no such requirement.

Having one rule for text and one rule for voice creates a lesser class of VRChat user, signals that chat-box users are somehow less trusted despite the fact that the use of chat-boxes is so easily logged and moderated by VRChat T&S. (Far easier than it is to moderate voice communication)

One has to ask why this issue isn't acknowledged or tracked, given that it is a trivial change that speaks to basic accessibility requirements of a well-established community.