2y ago

Is Blocking Ever Going To Block?

Currently users you block can still see your posts, reply to those posts, and trigger notifications when they do reply.

You can read the beginning of messages people you have blocked in your notifications tab, but have to unblock users to see the rest of what everyone else reading the replies to your post can see.

A "blocking" feature that is only inconvenient to the blocker is worse than no blocking feature at all, equivalent to trying to escape a fistfight by turning invisible but actually just closing your eyes.

71 comments

Aside from you getting notifications when they reply, i think all the rest is how blocking works on all internet forums (as opposed to social media sites). Like if you block someone on Reddit i believe they can still see your posts, you just don't see theirs.
- That is incredibly unuseful as a way to curate how and who all can interact with you.
  The way blocking seems to currently work is to the benefit of trolls & sealions.
  It would be well improved as a feature were blocked accounts unable to see or reply to posts or profiles of accounts that have them blocked.
  
  I disagree. On a public forum no one should be able to control what content i see and what content i don't see. If you're going around saying bullshit in a public forum, i should be able to see that, and i should be able to post a public reply refuting your bullshit. Otherwise people could post bullshit and block everyone from replying who would show that their post is bullshit. You shouldn't get to block people from rebutting your claims.
  EDIT:
  Though i could see the usefulness of an automatic tag on their comment saying "the OP has blocked this user, so OP doesn't see this post."
  
  Being unable to see your posts and comments wouldn't do much as the user could just sign out of their account or use a private window and be able to see it again. Comments sections like this are publicly visible and indexable.
  While I would love for the block feature to work how you describe, it only really works when creating an account takes effort and the comments aren't publically accessible. Blocked people not being able to reply to you would be a good start though.
- If you block someone on reddit, they can see your posts but they cannot reply to them. This is the expected behavior on a platform like this.
- Not true. You could respond to someone on reddit and they could not respond back. People abused this to get the last word in arguments
  
  You mean people who were blocked could still reply and they abused that attribute of the block system?
  Or do you mean people could say, "Go fuck yourself." block and the blocked person couldn't reply?
  ...because I'll be honest that second one sounds exactly like what I want to be able to do.

This is a problem on Mastodon also: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/08/mastodons-mastodonts/
Perhaps it's an ActivityPub thing although I see no reason why clients can't improve on it.

Blocking can't possibly stop them from seeing your posts... they may not even be on the same instance as you, so rules on your instance don't do anything to them. And if it did, all they'd have to do is log into another free account.
Blocking is an "I am ignoring you" feature not, not an "I'm hiding from you" feature.
That said, I wish the Notifications tab even worked... I just get Error 50x every time I try to open it, which sucks because the counter is showing a notification and I can't find the message it's on to clear the counter.
- Blocking is an "I am ignoring you" feature not, not an "I'm hiding from you" feature.
  Sounds like you are describing an "ignore" feature, not a blocking one. I have used sites where blocking works exactly as I described.
  
  I have also... but those sites weren't federated were they?
  The fediverse is not "a site"... it's a network of many independent sites. You can do whatever you want on your instance, but you don't get to control all the other instances.
  If you demand the ability to mute other people and prevent them from communicating with each other, you are fundamentally in the wrong place. If you choose to make a public statement, the public gets to respond to it. Your choice is whether or not you want to read their response.

I'm guessing that when you're losing an argument, you like to post a response and then block the other person so you get the last word, then convince yourself that the other person was a "sealion" or something. Reddit's block system is primarily used that way. If you don't like how blocking works here, I recommend Reddit.
I personally came here to get away from Reddit's "features" like private downvotes and silencing people who disagree with you, because they promote exactly the kind of toxic discussion I want to avoid.
If you're being harassed, report it.
- No, I just like to be able to end conversations when a person engages in bad faith for over 10 hours.
  
  You don't need to block someone to end a conversation. Just say "you're acting in bad faith, and I'm done here", then stop replying to them. They'll most likely reply to you once or twice, and that'll be it. And if you use kbin's block function, you'll never even know.
  If you're engaging with someone who is acting in bad faith for that long, you're most likely trying to convince the audience that the other person is wrong. If the fact that they're arguing in bad faith 10 hours in isn't abundantly clear to any person with half a brain reading your thread, then maybe they're not acting in bad faith and they just disagree with you on something you feel strongly about.
  Also, you kind of said the quiet part loud there. "Engaging in bad faith" isn't, in and of itself, the same as harassment. I'm sure that there are individual communities on kbin where critics of particular ideas and ideologies are silenced, and if that's what you need in order for your ideas to stand, then I'd suggest staying in those communities. The general consensus here seems to be that if you're out arguing in public and someone isn't actually harassing you (even if they disagree with you in a way that you believe constitutes "bad faith"), then they should be allowed to speak. Reddit's toxic climate has just been exacerbated by their bad block feature, because now the motivation when you get into an argument is to be the first to block so that you're guaranteed to have the last word. It doesn't lead to useful discourse.
  Bare minimum, if you want block to function this way, then you should have to delete any un-replied-to comments of yours in order to be able to do it so as to remove the perverse incentive to abuse the feature to "win" arguments. I'm sure you'd find that agreeable?
  
  Then block em and forget about them. Why you care or gotta control what goes on at their end?

71 comments