They shouldn’t be able to do that!

  • Flax@feddit.uk
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    15 hours ago

    Why not, exactly? I think with the way the fediverse works, this would be a needless hassle for them to program this in. IIRC, posts are all separate and are just referring to another post. I think it’ll be up to their server on whether or not to honour that block (your server could possibly sever the link on it’s frontend, but that won’t change that the person linked your post to theirs)

    And even if you could, they could still post a screenshot locally or write stuff about you.

  • regedit@lemmy.zip
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    21 hours ago

    That’s why I love Voyager for mobile viewing. Not sure the feature’s exclusivity, but you can tag people and add up or downvotes to their accounts total. For instance, you were at +70 upvotes from me. But if I didn’t like you, I could add a tag to your account with why or whatever, and add -1000, effectively highlighting, for me, how much less I enjoy your input compared to others. It doesn’t hide their bullshit but makes it super obvious who sucks complete ass!

    Along the vein of blocking, I like how lemmy does it. I can see the block person left a comment and choose to read it or ignore it.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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      19 hours ago

      Yeah, by blocking them you are saying YOU don’t want to see their posts. That doesn’t mean you get to make that decision for everyone else. I don’t see the problem here.

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        I never had a twitter account, but made a bsky account just to support people moving away from there even though I’d them they move to mastodon.

        Anyway, I saw a post claiming a certain fetish term was now forbidden because it was being used a slur. I commented that I’ve only ever heard it used to refer to a real person when the person in question was using it to describe themselves. I got some positive responses, but the ended up getting blocked from replying when they disagreed with me. Can 3rd parties see blocks or did it just look like I chickened out?

        I didn’t care for that and I think these little “features” of twitter that people have gotten use to has twisted how to interact with other people. On reddit or lemmy, the topic is the main focus and the people managing the topic should be the only ones who control what gets said there. With twitter and bsky, the opening post is the main focus and they get control of what gets said. I prefer the former over that latter.

        • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          Reddit also blocks you from replying. Not just to that person, but to the comment thread in general. So many people do the insult-block to “win” a conversation.

          • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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            14 hours ago

            The mods of the sub are the ones to decide who gets blocked though. Not the person you’re auguring with, unless you’re arguing with is a mod.

            • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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              12 hours ago

              The mods can ban you, but anyone can block you and stop you from commenting on threads they are involved in.

    • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
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      19 hours ago

      A block should also be able to prevent them from seeing your activity. That would not constitute silencing the blocked individual as they can still go anywhere and talk to/see anyone else on the fediverse, just not you.

      • deaf_fish@midwest.social
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        18 hours ago

        No, I don’t think that would be good. So for example if there was a guy who thought we should all be eating lead. And every time he posts you put up facts about how eating lead was poisonous. And then the lead guy blocked you. Then every time the lead guy posts about how everyone should eat lead, you wouldn’t see it and so you wouldn’t be able to reply with how lead is poisonous.

        So if the lead guy blocked everyone who disagreed with him publicly. Then the lead guy can just post whatever they want and no who knew lead was poisonous would reply because they wouldn’t see the post. So others who didn’t know lead was poisonous would start seeing this guy posting about eating lead without being challenged. And so they might think it’s a good thing.

        • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
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          16 hours ago

          I see what you mean. Personally I’m gonna side with the folks that need the block functionality as a defense against stalking/harassment though.

          The lead eater can ban anyone they want but that doesn’t stop others from posting direct challenges to the lead eater’s rhetoric elsewhere. I think its better to help those in need than to leave them vulnerable with less than ideal tools to protect themselves.

          • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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            14 hours ago

            But even that case doesn’t work because someone could use a different account (or no account at all) to do the stalking.

      • exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        17 hours ago

        There is a need for more precise terminology. We should refer to “block” as stopping someone from interacting with you or your submissions/comments and “mute”/“ignore” as making it so that the person’s own actions cannot be seen by you.

    • smnwcj@fedia.io
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      19 hours ago

      I think communicating that someone is blocked is a useful part of blocking. Even if it’s just a notification after comment “you have a blocked reply, it will not be visible to the poster”.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      I could see someone being frustrated that from a third party, it looks like you are not responding to a reply and that person could spin that as a concession that they were right

      I could see a compromise, where a direct reply from such a blocked/muted person is allowed, but indicated so that people are aware a response could not have been done.

  • Perspectivist@feddit.uk
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    1 day ago

    I have no issue with this whatsoever. I block people so that I don’t need to see their posts, not that they couldn’t see mine. If you don’t want others reading what you post online, then don’t post online.

    • angrystego@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Perhaps some people want others reading what they post online but don’t want to be bullied.

      • Perspectivist@feddit.uk
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        12 hours ago

        You can block bullies. They can continue to waste their time writing mean messages but those will never reach you.

    • bss03@infosec.pub
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      1 day ago

      Also, while other locations in the Fediverse might disable access to unauthenticated persons, comments and post in Lemmy are generally public in that way. So, a blocked user could simply logout (or visit from a different instance) to see the content.


      Also, as a third-party I do want someone (e.g. a fact checker) to be able reply to a comment with more information, so that I can see it, even if the commenter doesn’t want to see replies (from the “woke mob” or wikipedians, e.g.).

      I understand some people think the reply thread under their comments is somehow “owned” and should be “controlled” by them, but I don’t agree. I think this should also be true in most places on the Fediverse, tho it isn’t (as I understand it) on Mastodon (and the like).

    • tal@olio.cafe
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      23 hours ago

      If you’re concerned about someone being able to see your activity, no blacklisting-based system — which is what OP is talking about in terms of “blocking” would be – on a system without expensive identifiers (which the Threadiverse is not and Reddit is not — both let you make new accounts at zero cost) will do much of anything. All someone has to do is to just make a new account to monitor your activity. Or, hell, Reddit and a ton of Threadiverse instances provide anonymous access. Not to mention that on the Threadiverse, anyone who sets up an instance can see all the data being exchanged anyway.

      In practice, if your concern is your activity being monitored, then you’re going to have to use a whitelisting-based system. Like, the Fediverse would need to have something like invite-only communities, and the whole protocol would have to be changed in a major way.

      • Sirence@feddit.org
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        22 hours ago

        Some stalkers might notice and circumvent, but most won’t because in their mind they aren’t doing anything wrong so why would they check if they got blocked. But apparently if the solution is not perfect it’s not worth doing anything to deter it seems.

  • mathemachristian [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    Because it would allow people to push narratives and not get called out if they block everyone against them.

    Imagine a civil transphobe pushing some narrative that flies below the radar of whatever mods are moderating that comm. If they block all the trans users they cannot get called out on their stuff anymore.

    I think there was some discourse on this on black mastodon?

  • Natanael@infosec.pub
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    1 day ago

    From a technical standpoint, doing it in another way requires your blocks to be public.

    He and you are both publishing individual comments with metadata telling which thread and where in it that these entries go. The instance hosting the community simply pull all these entries together. To cut off that response then your instance must tell that hosting instance to detach that reply from the blocked user. Currently Lemmy doesn’t support any such thing.

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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    1 day ago

    How is it not fair? You get to decide what you can see and say. You don’t get to decide what I can see and say.

  • BlackPenguins@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The way Reddit does is abusive. I called out a guy for spamming, he blocked me, he’s the one who creates TV discussion threads, I can’t participate anymore.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      1 day ago

      they block evade by using another account to restart the conservation, or they get mad if you block them, then they try to mass report you.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      The way Reddit does is abusive.

      Yes, but counterpoint: it was also petty and satisfying as fuuuuck hammering someone with your last point and then blocking them so that after they write up their long-ass reply outlining why eugenics is the true path to a glorious white future, they end up getting an error message.

      Yah, it was very bad for actual discourse, but that ship has sailed. people don’t care about debate and discourse anymore, on almost every social media site people post things as stand-alone displays to viewers for points, never engaging with each other unless there’s a contentious point that can be leveraged for up-arrows and thumbs.

      We have to get back to talking to each other in real life and stop pretending having introversion or social anxiety is anything but an obstacle to community and a better world

  • MyDarkestTimeline01@ani.social
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    2 days ago

    Blocking means you can’t see them. It makes them non existent to you. It doesn’t hide you from them. It’s working as intended.

    • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      I’d call that “muting” rather than blocking.

      And it leaves vulnerable communities open to abuse, because they’re unable to police their communities and kick out harassers.

        • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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          Easier job to do when you’re actually getting reports.

          • Reporting = this breaks the rules please moderate
          • Blocking = Fuck them, even if they rechnicly abide by the rules I don’t want them near me
          • Muting = I don’t want to see what this person does but don’t want to hurt them beyond that
          • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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            i do that to, with the 2nd bullet point, sometimes i block people to avoid arguements, even if one of the parties maybe in the wrong.(either you misspoke something or the other guy was misinterpreting) most of the time, i block because they dont argue in good faith.(i almost never report people)

        • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          Lemmy communities and irl communities are different things that only sometimes overlap.

          For example, the irl trans community could be harassed in a Lemmy gaming community. If mods aren’t sympathetic, then they’re torn between just accepting the harassment, or forking the gaming community. While this is what Lemmy was meant to do, practically most Lemmy communities aren’t large enough to meaningful support more than one instance, so one of the instances is going to wither on the vine. And most Lemmy mods seem overworked, besides.

          • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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            1 day ago

            I’m not sure what you’re suggesting. If a gaming community’s members are harassing a trans community, could the trans community’s moderators not simply ban everyone from that gaming community from the trans community? That’s a power that moderators have. You could also report the gaming community to the administrators of their instance and if the administrators thought it was a problem they could shut down that community. You could also ask your own instance’s administrators to defederate from the gaming community’s instance. All of those things are things that can be done with the way the Fediverse is currently set up.

            • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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              1 day ago

              all of those are unrealistic options

              I said that forking the community to begin with isn’t realistic. There would be no “trans-friendly gaming” community because it wouldn’t have enough members to sustain it. Lemmy is too small to sustain multiple communities for the same topic, for all but the most popular topics. When you see multiple communities for a topic, almost always all but one is a ghost town.

              so splitting the community, or defederating aren’t really options
              hopefully going to mod, or failing that the admin, would be successful. but mods and admins are criminally overworked already, and lemmy is too small to maintain a healthy mod pool.

              I don’t have great technical solutions here, unfortunately.
              I’m just trying to explain that what OP wants is reasonable, and everyone here shitting on him is not being reasonable.

              • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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                1 day ago

                I’m just trying to explain that what OP wants is reasonable,

                And I maintain that it’s not reasonable. You (and OP) want individual users to be able to control what other individual users can see and do on the Fediverse. They’ve tried that on Reddit. RunawayFixer found this experiment, for example. The results were not good from a pragmatic perspective, let alone a philosophical one.

                I think you’re going to have to accept that in a free environment there are going to be people saying things and reading things that you don’t approve of. You can create a community with whatever rules you want to enforce there, but you can’t enforce your rules on other communities. Just as they can’t enforce them on yours.

                • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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                  1 day ago

                  I’m not trying to enforce rules on other communities.
                  im not even trying to enforce rules on any community

                  reddit-style blocking would allow the person to continue to be in that community, they wouldn’t even need to be kicked out.

                  its crazy that you’re framing personally blocking someone so they cant reply to it as though I’m changing the rules for lemmy communities.

                  Like, OP wasn’t even saying that blocking someone should hide my content from the person I blocked, just that it should stop them from replying to it. it doesn’t even have to be reddit style, it just has to be more than shutting your eyes and ears and saying “lalalalala”

      • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
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        Do those communities not have mods? Oh they do? Report them if they’re breaking the rules then. If they’re not breaking the rules then you just need to harden up.

        You need to harden up even if they are breaking the rules though.

    • Hofmaimaier@feddit.orgOP
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      That’s unfair. It’s rather fair they don’t see me, I blocked them for a reason.

        • Hofmaimaier@feddit.orgOP
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          My experience is, I see that there’s a comment, I can’t read it, I can’t upvote or downvote it, and I couldn’t report it, wonderful!

          • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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            Why would you want to read a comment by someone you’ve blocked, and why would you want to upvote, downvote, or report a comment that you haven’t read?

              • MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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                I have on occasion unblocked people just to see what was in a thread. I’ve never really been glad that I did so. I blocked them for a reason. I shouldn’t want to engage with their posts. I’m happier and it makes things more calm when I’m not fighting with morons over shit anyone can see is wrong.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 day ago

            What you are asking for is closer to something like being able to personally ban another user from all your own content.

            This would be more like if you made all your comments and posts in your own personal community, and then banned a user from it.

            This, your suggested paradigm, can also be entirely defeated by someone just… making another account.

            Or even: Logging out, and viewing as a guest.

            Closer to message board styled systems are not twitter, are not instagram.

            If you wanna try to develop something like a ‘private profile’ mode for lemmy, where you would have to grant access to every individual user you wanted to be able to see your posts and comments, good luck, go for it, code’s open source, best I can tell, all dev work on it is unpaid, volunteers.

            I am reasonably confident this is basically impossible given how lemmy is architected, but hey, maybe I’m wrong.

            • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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              I used to agree with you until I actually spoke with people from communities that get regularly harassed.

              Muting is great if all you want to do is hide content you don’t like. But if you need to defend yourself against a campaign of harassment, this only gives power to the harassers.

              Yes all the have to do is make a new account, but it’s another hurdle they have to cross. Better than no hurdle and also blindfolding yourself

              • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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                I used to agree with you until I actually spoke with people from communities that get regularly harassed.

                Oh great, this again.

              • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                I mean…

                I am describing a technical reality of how lemmy works.

                You can ‘disagree’ with that, but uh, you would just be wrong.

                Not in the sense of ‘I do not have enough empathy to consider the plight of a regularly harassed person’.

                More in the sense of … ok, then don’t use lemmy, if you don’t like how it works.

                Or… make it work the way you want it to work, by actually coding it.

                Like, I wasn’t joking when I basically said ‘I am reasonbly confident it is impossible to make lemmy work the way you want it to.’

                Thats not my opinion, in a… how should things work in an ideal world, sense of ‘opinion’.

                It is my opinion, as a person who understands a bit (certainly not all) about how the code just actually works.

                If you can figure it out, I’d be impressed.

                Alternatively, if you’d like to pay me $50 an hour to attempt to develop that, I may have some room in my schedule.

                • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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                  I know, i had a whole discussion about this 2 years ago, which is why I changed my mind about this very topic (I used to be very much "things are public by default, no expectation of privacy in a social network).

                  but that doesn’t make it good. this is a problem with the design of lemmy IMO. Lemmy is the best popular option we have right now, and unfortunately popularity is important. Lemmy is already a ghost town, i cant imagine moving to an even smaller alternative.

                  better than reddit, but far from perfect.

      • Zak@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        The only way to do that in a federated system would be to effectively make blocks public. That has its own disadvantages.

          • killingspark@feddit.org
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            It’s hard to control which Information other people get in a system where many servers share information like posts and comments. Think of it as throwing your post on a public wall. Everyone that walks by will be able to see it.

            It’s (relatively) easy to control what information you want to see. Or at least information from which sources you want to see, or not see.

          • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
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            Since each instance is its own ‘website’ that shares content with each other, your block would need to be publicly available so that every other site can see it and implement it.

            • Hofmaimaier@feddit.orgOP
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              Thanks Final conclusion, no offence: Blocking is rather useless in the Fediverse, unless you submit to complete ignorance.

              • Zak@lemmy.world
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                That’s mostly true; it’s optimized for wide dissemination of information, and the idea of keeping a specific person from seeing information that’s shown to the rest of the world isn’t very compatible with that. It doesn’t really work on Reddit or web forums that are visible without logging in either since a person you’ve blocked can still view your posts anonymously.

                A bit more looking brings me to the ActivityPub spec. Your server should tell the blocked user’s server about the block, and the blocked user’s server shouldn’t allow them to interact with your posts or comments (that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to see your posts or comments).

                The thing is, in network protocol documents, should means the behavior is optional. Fediverse software doesn’t have to support blocks at all according to the protocol.

              • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
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                Imagine a hypothetical situation where I have beef with you. I create a second account and block you. I use this account to scout your posts, then using that other account, I go to all of the posts you’re commenting on, and post comments calling you out for being… I don’t know, whatever nasty thing I want to call you out for. Because that account has blocked you, you can’t see those posts (and presumably not the replies to them, either), and can’t defend yourself.

                What problem have we solved?

                • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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                  The problem you’ve solved is that they’re not harassing you in your spaces, and your communities.
                  If they wanna cry about me in their basement with their own friends, that’s ok. But I want to put hurdles, at least some inconveniences, between myself and their ability to harass me in my communities. Force them to manage 30 accounts, etc.

      • MyDarkestTimeline01@ani.social
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        Go back to Reddit? This system stops witch hunts, effectively stops echo chambers from gaining traction, and helps protect against power tripping mods.

        Much like someone else told you, you can control what you see. If you don’t see the trolls do they really exist for you? If you don’t go looking for their “ghost” you won’t find it

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    I don’t mind it, but if the devs change it I hope they don’t take the Reddit route that prevents you from replying to any comment chain the user is in, especially with how small Lemmy is. Direct replies I can understand.

  • tal@olio.cafe
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    How the Threadiverse works today — blocking hides content from blocked users, but doesn’t affect their ability to comment — is how Reddit originally worked, and I think that it was by far a better system.

    Reddit only adopted the “you can’t reply to a comment from someone who has blocked you” system later. What it produced was people getting into fights, adding one more comment, and then blocking the other person so that they’d be unable to respond, so it looked like the other person had conceded the point.

    • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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      A thousand percent this.
      Reddit’s new system makes a ton of sense until you see it in action in a cat fight with the blocked user having to edit their previous comment to clarify they’re now unable to respond to anything the other user is saying and everything turns into a mess.

      While I could totally agree neither method is perfect, it only takes one heated thread on Reddit to see why (IMO) this new method is much worse than the previous.

      • tal@olio.cafe
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        I’m not totally sure about the chronology, but I think that the “old->new” block change on Reddit may have been due to calls from Twitter users. Most of the people I saw back on Reddit complaining about the old behavior prior to the change were saying “on Twitter, blocked users can’t respond”.

        On Reddit, the site is basically split up into a series of forums, subreddits. On the Threadiverse, same idea, but the term is communities. And that’s the basic unit of moderation — that is, people set up a set of rules for how what is permitted on a given community, and most restrictions arise from that. There are Reddit sitewide restrictions (and here, instancewide), but those don’t usually play a huge rule compared to the community-level things.

        So, on Twitter — and I’ve never made a Twitter account, and don’t spend much time using it, but I believe I’ve got a reasonable handle on how it works — there’s no concept of a topic-specific forum. The entire site is user-centric. Comments don’t live in forums talking about a topic; they only are associated with the text in them and with the parent comment. So if you’re on Twitter, there has to be some level of content moderation unless you want to only have sitewide restrictions. On Twitter, having a user be able to act as “moderator” for responses makes a lot more sense than on Reddit, because Twitter lacks an analog to subreddit moderators.

        So Twitter users, who were accustomed to having a “block” feature, naturally found Reddit’s “block” feature, which did something different from what they were used to, to be confusing. They click “block”, and what it actually does is not what they expect — and worse, at a surface glance, the behavior is the same. They think that they’re acting as a moderator, but they’re just controlling visibility of comments to themselves. Then they have an unpleasant surprise when they realize that what they’ve been doing isn’t what they think that they’ve been doing.

        • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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          Yeah, looking through a Twitter’s user lens I can see why they’re confused. What on Reddit was a block, on Twitter would be a Mute. Maybe they should call it that.

    • tal@olio.cafe
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      I’d also add, for people who feel that they don’t have a good way to “hang up” on a conversation that they don’t want to be participating any further without making it look like they agree with the other user, the convention is to comment something like this:

      “I don’t think that we’re likely to agree on this point, so I’m afraid that we’re going to have to agree to disagree.”

      That way, it’s clear to everyone else reading the thread that the breaking-off user isn’t simply conceding the point, but it also doesn’t prevent the other user from responding (or, for that matter, other users from taking up the thread).

      EDIT: Also, on Reddit, I remember a lot of users who had been subjected to the “one more comment and a block” stuff then going to try to find random other comments in the thread where other users might see their comment, responding to those comments complaining that the other user had blocked them, and then posting their comment there, which tended to turn the whole thread into an ugly soup.

      Also, with Reddit’s new system, at least with some clients and if I remember correctly, the old Web UI, there was no clear indication as to why the comment didn’t take effect — it looked like some sort of internal error, which tended to frustrate users. Obviously, that’s not a fundamental problem with a “blocking a user also prevents responding” system, but it was a pretty frustrating aspect of Reddit’s implementation of it.

  • missingno@fedia.io
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    That style of blocking makes sense for more personal social media, but I don’t think it fits a public forum like the Threadiverse. On Reddit, bad actors were able to weaponize blocking to hide from anyone who would disagree with them, anyone who would push back against misinformation. That did a lot more harm than good.

    Everything you post here is public, and you should expect that anyone can see it, even people you do not like. If you don’t want to see someone you don’t like, that’s what blocking is for, but you shouldn’t expect to be able control who can see your posts when they’re all public to begin with.

    If something is so sensitive that you think you need to hide it from someone you don’t like, then this probably isn’t the platform to post it on at all.

      • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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        My main experience with blocking is when people use it to “get the last word” in an argument. They’ll write up a response - often containing questions and challenges to my position - and then immediately block me after posting it so that it will look like I gave up in the face of their arguments.

        I usually just edit my previous comment with whatever responses seem necessary, playing an Uno Reverse on them since they’ll be the ones who never see it.

        It’s still rather annoying, though, because if other people also respond Reddit’s brain-dead implementation prevents me from responding to other people who have responded to someone who blocked me.

        I am glad that the Fediverse has a much more sane approach to blocking that doesn’t let it be weaponized like that.

        • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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          At the time when I became inactive on Reddit, Azerbaijan was building up to finish the Nagarno Karrabach conflict once and for all. There was a lot of blatant anti Armenian, pro Azerbaijani misinformation being posted in relevant discussions (that they were tolerant, only wanting peace, there was never any ethnic cleansing, …), and most of those comments went without anyone posting a simple fact check to debunk it.

          I suspected that they had been sharing a blocklist and had blocked most of those who would call them out on their bullshit. I didn’t bother either since I just expected to be blocked as well and I had basically given up on the platform anyhow. I found swapping accounts to read threads annoying as hell, so it was easier to not comment and just be silently disappointed in humanity.

          The fact checks that I did see at the time, were mostly posted as a reply to the top comment of the chain, hoping to go unnoticed by the one spreading misinformation, but that will only work for so long. Reddit is fucked when it comes to discussing political news or gauging public opinion (imo), it’s now designed for spreading misinformation (imo again).

        • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          The worst part IMO is that if they commented anywhere in the chain you’re blocked from that entire chain. Say you’re having a nice conversation back and forth about something, then they reply to the original comment (not even seeing you) now you’re blocked from the entire thread of comments.

    • Grimy@lemmy.world
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      Some users would write their reply and then quickly block the other person so their points couldn’t be contested.

    • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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      I’d call what you’re describing “muting” rather than blocking.

      I used to agree with you, but then I spoke with some people from persecuted minorities, and this style of blocking just gives power to their abusers rather than keeping their communities and themselves safe.

      Yes they can get a new account, but it’s another hurdle, and if we erect enough hurdles then it’ll catch enough of them. Defense in depth.

      • missingno@fedia.io
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        We’ve seen the problems with Reddit’s style of blocking already.

        If someone’s being truly abusive, that’s something you should report to moderators or instance admins.

        • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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          I agree it has problems, but that doesn’t mean that anything is better.

          Reporting someone is good, but isn’t that subject to the exact same reasons why “it won’t work”? If reddit style blocking someone isn’t effective anyways, why would admin bans be effective?
          This assumes that admins and mods even have the capacity to deal with all this shit, which seems to be very uncertain.

          • missingno@fedia.io
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            I don’t understand what you mean. Moderator bans do work, that’s a moderator’s job.

            • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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              a common response I’ve been getting is “blocking doesn’t work, they just need to make a new account”
              but then they say “if its really a problem, then they just need to report the user”
              but if making a new account would defeat blocking, then making a new account would defeat reporting a user. its either effective in both places or neither place.

              • missingno@fedia.io
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                That isn’t what I said. You’re replying to me to talk about somebody else’s argument, while completely ignoring mine.

                • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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                  sorry i was getting it mixed up, i’ve had a very similar conversations a few times and that rebuttal came up multiple times.

                  mods and admins are overworked, and they can’t always be expected to keep up to date with dogwhistles along with everything else they have to manage. besides, harassment doesn’t always appear to break ToS - starting rumours and spreading lies about someone can be very difficult to prove to a mod, but can have huge repercussions in some communities.
                  and besides, it can take a while before mods/admins are able to take action.

                  IMO I think a few things should exist.

                  I should be able to prevent someone from replying to my content even if I can’t prevent them from seeing it.
                  Additionally, I think there should be a best effort to make invite-only/private communities. I know that the fediverse makes this technically difficult, but having something is better than having nothing.