Fediverse memes

There's no such thing as "public except for that guy in particular."

If any logged-out rando can see a thing, preventing a specific logged-in user from seeing it doesn't work and shouldn't be tried. It's ridiculous. And it's a great incentive for assholes to just make a new account.

The worst way to do it is how reddit handled it, where any asshole can have the last word, for free. You can't reply to anyone if someone in the thread blocks you. You can't even reply to your own comments in the chain, to notify people, 'hey, some asshole blocked me, I'm not just ignoring you or the argument.'

If this were implemented on Lemmy:

1. Post disinfo
2. Block all users that attempt to fact-check your post, preventing them from seeing any other posts you make
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until banned
4. Create new account and pre-populate your blocklist with previously blocked users
5. Repeat steps 1-4 forever

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.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/sdcsx3/testing_reddits_new_block_feature_and_its_effects/

I really don't think blocking should prevent people from replying to you. I believe it should hide the content and not send you notifications, yes.

At the bare minimum, blocking should only prevent you from directly replying. On Reddit, if anyone in the comment chain above the comment you're replying to had blocked you then you couldn't make the comment.

I'm willing to discuss this, my opinions aren't rock solid on this.

In cases of harassment (what I view as the strongest counter argument) I think mods/admin need to take action by banning. Like if someone puts a comment on every post I make saying "JackbyDev is a doodoo head" (or something actually offensive lol) then that's harassment. I'm having trouble thinking of any problematic behaviors that wouldn't qualify as harassment that allowing someone to comment in reply to would actually prevent.

(None of this comment has anything to do with blocking an instance which is a separate topic I have separate opinions on.)

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.

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

Just make alts. Anything on the fediverse is up for debate

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

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.

I would prefer if people I block couldn't see anything I post

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.

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.

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?