Context: Lemmy still allow people to comment on your posts or comments after you blocked them:
If this were implemented on Lemmy:
- Post disinfo
- Block all users that attempt to fact-check your post, preventing them from seeing any other posts you make
- Repeat steps 1 and 2 until banned
- Create new account and pre-populate your blocklist with previously blocked users
- Repeat steps 1-4 forever
Oh dang, nice find. I wasn’t even thinking about Reddit.
Reddit implemented this, and it was abused heavily to push trolls posts and disinformation up the algorithm, since by blocking people who disagreed with them, after multiple attempts the naysayers could no longer see the posts.
Somebody tested it, and was able to get their testing misinformation posts heavily upvoted after just a few days.
Has happened multiple times to me. I called somebody out for saying something wrong or bigoted or whatever, they blocked me after responding to me, I could no longer respond back to their response. And then presumably they kept saying shit that I was not able to see because I was blocked
It’s a short-sighted way of implementing blocking, since it allows for heavy abuse by bad actors
Is there a long-sighted way to implement blocking?
Yeah, there was plenty of discussion on Reddit back in the day about the drawbacks and pitfalls of the blocking system. Surprised to see people calling for its implementation here.
This is one of the major gripes I have with Reddit. So often do people just block me when they are losing a debate against me, making it impossible to reply. A public forum should not behave this way if you want a healthy debate culture
Bluesky/twitter/etc are person centric - you follow the person
Lemmy/reddit/etc are topic centric - you follow a community
It makes sense for blocking on Bluesky to completely hide you, you’ve severed the person - person relationship.
On Lemmy severing a person - person relationship shouldn’t disadvantage the user from interacting with the community. Communities don’t want duplicate posts so if you post some big news in a popular community now all the users you’ve blocked would be cut off from that content. Their personal beef with you shouldn’t disadvantage them in the communities this way.
This problem can be seen clearly on Reddit where blocking works this way, frequently abused by spammers and powerusers.
Another missing feature is the ability to stop inbox notifications for any any particular comment you made.
Look, sometimes I just want to say something inciteful and then just dip out without the fear of dealing with the fallout, okay?
Sometimes I have one more thing worth saying, but think the right choice would be to let the other party to the conversation have the last word, but also know that if I get notified later with a response I’ll be tempted to keep responding even though there’s not going to be anything that hasn’t already been said.
blocking on mastodon, that user ceases to exist, and is no longer able to see, vote, or comment on your content. on mastodon, blocking is blocking
on lemmy/mbin, blocking only serves to mask that users content, though they are still able to see, vote, comment, and mine your content for descriptive data which can, has, and will lead to doxxing
“blocking” on lemmy/mbin is dangerous misnamed bullshit
though they are still able to see, vote, comment, and mine your content for descriptive data which can, has, and will lead to doxxing
Like 100% of the internet, you mean?
I don’t get why the distinction matters. From your view, it doesn’t have an impact, does it?
Have you ever worked with someone who has trauma? Triggers are more than the actuality of an event but knowing that the possibility to be hurt again. I’m not going to say more, but there’s a lot more to be said.
I mean, sure, but if you block/mute somebody and don’t see, hear, or feel them anymore (which is what the block on lemmy seems to do), when what’s the point of additionally signaling to other users “hey, I blocked you”? It seems like a great way to challenge them to create a new account and immediately antagonize you for blocking them to create the cycle again. And on the fediverse it’s even easier since they can just pick an instance that doesn’t know them.
I don’t think the point is to signal to others. It’s to prevent the further mental deterioration from a traumatic event.
I like Lemmy and the anonymity, but it seems to allow harassers to thrive then.
I don’t think the point is to signal to others
I don’t think so either, but it is a side-effect if blocking were implemented like on twitter, were it not? Harassers would be aware they are blocked and find new ways to harass. Silent blocking (or the post calls it muting) is there better option, in that case, isn’t it?
I don’t claim expertise on how harassers act or what works for those who have been harassed, but we should be careful to not let the perfect be the enemy of thr good. I think the point is that having options, both muting and blocking, could provide the harassed with some tools. The suggestion isn’t to get rid of muting but to add blocking in the way blue sky implements blocking.
With said, if I were a Lemmy developer, knew little about harassment, but still cared, I do the following: reach out to the community and get some input from harassed individuals, talk to communities of those who have been harassed, talk to developers of other platforms and see how they handled the problem, and finally, talk to an expert. When implementing the tool, I’d communicate the tools to users and take feedback.
I’m not against adding tools. I’m against the notion that lemmy devs, who give up their free time work on lemmy, are somehow lazy and deserve being mocked for not getting around to implementing and maintaining a block function. These aren’t people who make 100-200k working the project, have a large team of developers, and loads of time to engage with everybody who has an opinion about lemmy.
Maybe I’m wrong and the lemmy devs had a definitive answer on blocking, I dunno, but looking at other responses, nothing of the sort has been proven. They might have some (OK many) views I do not agree with, but the “oh look, this VC funded startup with a hoard of full-time developers developed a product with more features than 2 guys working on a fun-time project after work! how can the 2 guys be so XYZ!?!?!” is a ridiculous angle to take. No saying you took it, but that’s the meme by OP and most of the responses here.
from the post up above, no, and that’s the issue:
Context: Lemmy still allow people to comment on your posts or comments after you blocked them:
Context: Lemmy still allow people to comment on your posts or comments after you blocked them:
Yes, they can comment, but the person blocking them doesn’t see it. The blocked person won’t know they are blocked, and the blocker won’t know the blocked person commented. I don’t see how that is bad. In the end, for the blocker, the effect is the same, is it not?
no, it functions as it should.
There is value to the blocked person not being able to find out in any way, whether you’ve blocked them.
And if they really want to see your content, on federated social media, where you can’t enforce a login requirement to view the content, they’ll always be able to find your content if they really want to.
Stopping them from being able to comment on your posts would be nice, tho. Even better if they can comment, but it doesn’t show up for you or anyone else.
Implementing such a block would be tricky, though. It is not as simple as community bans, as communities are always governed by their home instance.
If you post or comment in a community that isn’t local, someone from a third instance could interact with that content without ever communicating with your home instance.
It can still be done, but it’s a much more involved implementation than community bans.
Even better if they can comment, but it doesn’t show up for you or anyone else.
This would be abused. Imagine I post some manipulated fake news or something. Then I block every single person who points out the bullshit in my post so no one sees it.
This happened exactly as you describe on Reddit.
reddit implemented that and I’m sure it’s abused
I can tell you it has been abused against me multiple times on Reddit. I called someone out for something wrong or bigoted they posted and they blocked me after responding, making me unable to respond back. And presumably kept posting stuff in the future that I just didn’t see, and wasn’t able to call out
It’s a terrible system as it just allows abuse by bad faith actors more than anything else
Ok, but how would blocks removing comments from your posts for everyone, including the blocked user, be any different? That could be abused in the exact same way.
If you’re saying blocks should only prevent future comments, this could by all means also work the same way.
The point is that it should work like a shadow ban, and not be obvious to the person you blocked. That discourages them from immediately coming at you with an alt.
The block most platforms use is that if you block someone, none of you can see each others contributions, but your past interactions are still visible to everyone.
I know.
But when did I suggest past activity should be affected, which is what you replied about?
It wasn’t clear to me in your comment but you were suggesting it wouldn’t be retroactive?
If so, then sounds okay, as long as the person knows they have been blocked, would suck to write a well written comment in reply to someone who blocked you, and unknowingly your comment is hidden for everyone because you don’t realise you were blocked.
Why would it be retroactive?
If so, then sounds okay, as long as the person knows they have been blocked, would suck to write a well written comment in reply to someone who blocked you, and unknowingly your comment is hidden for everyone because you don’t realize you were blocked.
That’s exactly what should happen. If someone can just instantly know when they get blocked, nothing stops them from instantly signing up with alt account to continue bitching at someone.
This is less of an issue with centralized social media, but with federation you absolutely should take measures like this to curb at least some portion of targeted harassment.
And if you bothered someone enough for them to block you, not being allowed to stand on their soapbox anymore (not being able to make comments on their posts visible to everyone else) is a really weird thing to worry about.
I would prefer if people I block couldn’t see anything I post
Err… you know all these comments are posted publicly and anyone can view them, right?
At least on Twitter before Elon changed things, the same thing applied, tweets were public but you could still block people.
Currently, X displays a “You’re blocked” message when trying to view the profile of a person who’s blocked you. In addition to blocking all posts, it also prevents you from seeing their replies, media, followers, and following list.
Did twitter have private accounts?
Yeah locked accounts are pretty commonly used in conjuncture with public accounts.
I can’t see them. I can only assume [TheAlbatross(https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/u/TheAlbatross) has blocked me.
Who said that?
I would prefer if people I block couldn’t see anything I post
One of the problems is that if the post is public, anyone you block could just log out and see your post.
Hmmm you’re right. Okay.
I would prefer if people I block were hurt a little.
Wowww this comment says a lot. Have you ever considered that if you were given the ability to ‘hurt’ people who you think deserve it, that other people could use that same ability to ‘hurt’ people who dont deserve it? Maybe stop focusing on retaliation for dumb internet disagreements and go touch some grass.
Oh, pah, it’s a joke, lighten up!
IDK, seems like blocking behaving like that on Lemmy could backfire, actually encouraging abuse.
For example. What happens if someone being malicious blocks you and then starts talking shit about you elsewhere in the comment thread? The person being abused would never know.
It’s not even theoretical. Reddit implemented this and the exact behaviour you described happened. Somebody tested and documented it.
I’ve had multiple occasions where someone on reddit was losing a debate against me and just blocked me, making it impossible to reply and giving them the “last word” to everyone else that can still see the entire comment chain.
This is not how a public forum like Reddit or Lemmy should behave. It makes sense on actual social media platforms like Instagram, but not here
I don’t think this type of block makes sense for a more forum-like environment. In fact I think it’s more absuable for bad actors to be able to conceal their rhetoric from anyone they know would oppose it.
Yep, happened on Reddit exactly as you theorised.
Just a short hypothetical: You start this thread or even top level vomment and I don’t agree with you. Then I reply something and block you immediatelly after. That could be another tool for trolls, but I guess there could be some solutions that fix this problem.
(Not dissagreeing with the OP, just brainstorming)
I had a mod do that to me. They replied to my comment with a bunch of false accusations, then deleted my comment and banned me from the community. So, all the people saw was my username with all the accusations below, and I couldn’t respond. I just blocked the whole instance and moved on.
This happened to me once on reddit. God I was pissed off cause they were spreading lies about me and I couldn’t say anything.
They wield the instance ban hammer for themselves, while tools for the common plebes are lower priority:-P.
If only plebes could defederate 😂
Speak for yourself - I already have:-).
I’m not kidding btw, PieFed lets you do it, as too do the Sync and Connect apps, I hear. Mbin and base Lemmy do not, nor the other apps e.g. Voyager. The Fediverse is really growing, beyond its original limitations and reaching new horizons!:-)
Oh, I meant letting a user defederate the whole server, for everyone haha
I mean… if you mean a user making that choice for everyone else on their instance, then no - boooo, I wouldn’t want that. If you don’t want
an abortiona defederation, then don’t get one, simple as that.But if you mean being able to block every single user from an entire instance, a true “instance block” rather than a mere “communities mute”, then yeah, that’s legit what I meant. Personally, I blocked all users from lemmy.ml that way. Though by far the more major effect was probably my piefed.social instance having defederated from hexbear.net, whereas my prior one at discuss.online had not.
blocking has always worked really well for me, but I mainly use it to filter what content I see. while it is a bummer that you can’t block people commenting on your posts, can’t say I’ve ever been bothered by the comments.
I love it.
i can block users…
Yes, but they can still see your content and interact with it.
Blocking on lemmy is more like muting. It removes the user for you, but doesn’t remove you for them.
I really think demanding all platforms allow you to post content which is viewable to the general public except for specific individuals is naive.
If the default position is that people can see the content, then excluding a few individuals is an exercise in futility
Blocking comments prevents harassment. I’ve seen people blocking harassers, the harassers would continue to harass them, and the harassed person would know they still comment (the interface shows “2 hidden comments”), and that anyone but them can see those comments.
Definitely not ideal.
Indeed. In those cases community mods can step in and issue bans, but that is a stopgap.
It would be better to have some way to block a given user from interacting with your content, if not prevent them from seeing it.
Actually, just blocking them from being able to respond directly to comments between blocked users could be pretty useful.
If wanted the person could make a separate comment fighting perceived inaccuracies if so felt needed but would likely look petty in most cases and dissuade the practice.
I wonder what downsides could happen but still sounds pretty good if complicated an option.
Oh, I agree.
Its utility isn’t meant to make you appear as if you don’t exist, but rather eliminate the ability of the blocked account to disturb your experience in any way.
If you block someone, but they can still leave a bunch of nasty comments on every one of your posts which are still visible to everyone else, then that goal hasn’t really been achieved.
