They shouldn’t be able to do that!
eyup. im a big proponent of reciprocal blocking. Same problem in mmo chats. It gets the job done but unfortunately ends up creating a creepy situation.
It… Makes perfect sense?
YOU blocked them. They didn’t block you.
It’s like when you were a kid and told to ignore the kid bullying you; except that it actually works.
I love you, but I hate you!
If I block them, I want to stop them from engaging with me.
I don’t want to let them continue to engage with me and other people in my comments, but just lose my ability to see what they’re saying about me.
That’s like saying the purpose of a locked door isn’t to keep people out, it’s to prevent you from seeing what they’re doing in your house
The engagement between the two of you is over. He’s saying stuff to other people now, not to you.
I don’t want to let them continue to engage with me and other people in my comments, but just lose my ability to see what they’re saying about me.
You want to control what they see and do? No, you don’t get to decide that for other people.
If you don’t want to lose your ability to see what they’re saying then don’t block them.
That’s not how harassment works.
I think you know that, too.Consider it a restraining order.
A restraining order is something a judge grants. That’d be a moderator or administrator in the context of the Threadiverse, and they do have the ability to prevent people from posting. Bringing something to their attention is what the “report” link is for, it’s their decision after that.
I remain firm in my opinion that giving everybody the ability to unilaterally apply restraining orders to everybody they want to for whatever reason they want to leads to bad outcomes. That’s how Reddit does it and it’s pretty badly broken over there.
It being broken over there doesn’t make it not broken over here.
Report is good, but why should I have to let other people read my content? Why is this a hill you want to die on?
It being broken over there doesn’t make it not broken over here.
It being different over here is what makes it not broken over here. The effects that makes Reddit’s block system suck so badly are not present here.
It’s hard to tell exactly what you mean, but there are different sucky effects.
Report is good, but why should I have to let other people read my content? Why is this a hill you want to die on?
Why should you have to let other people read what you post on a public site?! Is that really the hill you want to die on?
Yes, it is.
Because it’s my content.
Because it’s not just a public site, public/private is a false dichotomy.
Because social networks need to provide effective anti-harassment tools, and if admins/mods are too overworked then that needs to be self-serviced.Defederation exists
Instance bans exist
Community bans exist
Why are all of those good, but individual bans aren’t?
Why are all of those effective (at least partially), but not for individuals?
Or is the argument that all of those should be disposed of, too?
This is a public forum. If you post to a public forum, you should expect your posts to be public. If you’re posting something you don’t want to be public, all I can say to you is that this isn’t the right platform for that.
thats exactly the take i used to have, until it was explained to me how harmful that is to persecuted minorities and drives them off the platform.
I evidently cannot do a good job of explaining why that would be the case and (apparently) why thats even a problem, but I believe it is.
Nah, in a public discussion, you/authorship isn’t the primary concern, the text & interest of the public is primary. Whether you want to see that text is your liberty. The liberty of the public, however, is to likewise decide for themselves whether to read the text no matter who authors it regardless of petty disagreements between authors. Your disagreements aren’t ours.
Just like in offline public discussions, no one should decide whether the public gets to see a marvelous takedown of text you happened to write just because you disagree with the author of that spectacular takedown.
I disagree that all content on lemmy should be treated as strictly public. I think that there are (or should be) nuance to that.
I realize that federation creates technical challenges to meet that strictly, but a best effort is better than no effort.
for example, I think its reasonable to have communities that are invite-only. AFAIK thats not currently possible in lemmy, but giving a best-effort to make that happen would be better than nothing. Instances known to ignore it could be defederated, clients known to ignore it could be blocked. swiss cheese defense.
I disagree that all content on lemmy should be treated as strictly public.
Acknowledging your disagreement, it’s observable fact that it is. It’s readable to the public & open to public input. That input may be more concerned with responding to ideas (eg, as a criticism or corroboration) and presenting that to the public reader than for communicating specifically to the author of the text that inspired it. I certainly read primarily for content & ideas and respond accordingly like I’m trying to show the public something. Anyone can respond.
Comments I release to the public I treat as the public’s & not really mine. If that’s not for you, then I don’t think you’re identifying a technical limitation but a disagreement with design goals: the design of lemmy makes much sense for public discussion.
With private, direct messages, you may have a better argument.
so just a point here - the OP never actually said that the blockee shouldn’t be able to see what the blocker posted, they weren’t actually complaining about visibility of their own content.
they were complaining that when they blocked someone, the blockee could continue the harassing behaviour and the blocker would just be ignorant of the slander being said of them. if the blockee escalated to doxxing or something, they wouldn’t even know, and the blockee could do it and would be unlikely to be reported since reporting on behalf of someone (i expect) is much less common unless the offense is both egregious and trivially verifiable.They were complaining the blockee could write any public response even an impersonal one.
Doxxing & other issues likely already violate rules & I don’t see how that would happen, since we don’t reveal much about ourselves. I don’t see how defamation would happen without a real identity. Harassment likely wouldn’t fit the legal definition: at most, some call being incredibly annoying harassment.
I’ve seen threatening replies I didn’t report (because I consider online threats vacant hyperbole) result in bans.
I think that the important thing to keep in mind is that not every lemmy community is a community of strangers. some lemmy communities can overlap significantly with IRL communities, like sports teams, neighborhoods, and classes. Many people in these lemmy communities may know eachother, even if the mods dont know them.
I dont have specific examples of this, since im an old fart and not a school kid with a bunch of extracurricular activities, but are the kinds of cases I’m worried about.in these kinds of examples, the harassment may be both especially potent and especially subtle, because they’ll be using dog whistles and inside jokes, so it may not be something a mod is equipped to handle. Ideally parents would get involved (in the case of schoolkids), but we know that doesn’t always happen.
You don’t get to make that decision.
you dont get to make that decision
I didn’t say I do - the software developers of Lemmy did. If you don’t like it go back to Reddit where they do exactly what you are asking for.
I’ve never been on reddit, fucking crazy puritan.
and guess what: the developers of lemmy can change it if they want to.
but meanwhile here you are, insulting people for having differing opinions, and discussing why they have those reasons. huh, funny.fucking crazy puritan.
Where did this come from? lol What a bizarre thing to say over this.
and guess what: the developers of lemmy can change it if they want to.
No shit sherlock.
but meanwhile here you are, insulting people for having differing opinions
Where am I doing that?
If I block them, I want to stop them from engaging with me.
That’s exactly what happens. They can no longer engage with YOU because YOU no longer see THEM.
It’s a curtain, not a door.
Engaging with me is more than my ability to respond.
Them replying to my content is still engaging with me, no matter if I can see it. Them telling misinformation to other people in my thread is still engaging with me.You are (I know this is a shock) not the centre of the internet. Your inability to police what other people say is not a bug, but a feature.
you are (I know this is a shock) not the center of society. your ability to harass people without repercussion is a bug, not a feature.
This is not harassment. If you feel otherwise please use the tools provided and report.
whats not harassment?
Im a big proponent of symetric blocking. Normal blocking is like making the person you blocked invisible to you and if the people you block tend to be to you sorta creepy well… I mean if there was a flasher in the neighborhood and you turn them invisible its great to not see that but…
Agreed. It’s a flaw in the system
Thank you.
I wish we had time-limited blocks / mutes on Lemmy. I use them all the time on Mastodon to exit a conversation when I am getting to short. If it really matters, I can revisit after a fortnight of reflection.
When I block someone, I don’t want to see their posts anymore. I know they can still comment on my posts, but that’s okay, I just don’t see their contributions any longer to make me angry.
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.
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.
If they are running their own communities yes they can. Mods can and do ban people from the communities.
lemmy communities and irl communities aren’t the same, they only sometimes partially overlap.
Moderators are still able to ban people from communities.
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
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.
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.
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.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.
I’m not trying to enforce rules on other communities.
im not even trying to enforce rules on any communityreddit-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”
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.
That’s unfair. It’s rather fair they don’t see me, I blocked them for a reason.
The only way to do that in a federated system would be to effectively make blocks public. That has its own disadvantages.
Sorry I’m a nurse, explain it to me like I’m five years old.
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.
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.
Thanks Final conclusion, no offence: Blocking is rather useless in the Fediverse, unless you submit to complete ignorance.
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?
Well multi accounting is the next problem… Just live an unpeacefull live then…
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.
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.
You get to control your own experience, not their experience.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
I could do it at 48/h, js
I used to agree with you until I actually spoke with people from communities that get regularly harassed.
Oh great, this again.
Wtf does that even mean?
I thought you blocked the person so you wouldn’t have to read what they wrote
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?
Ask yourself that question when it’s about time.
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.
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
It doesn’t make sense in the case said blocked user is attacking the user who blocked them, but on the case were the user that is blocking is the offender it makes much more sense.
For example, one could make a post with misinformation about a user and then blocking the target so they can’t reply.
I guess this protects someone being wrongly accused of something and the accuser blocking the accused(hiding). But it leaves more vulnerable users being targeted by another user that for some reason isn’t breaking community rules.
So I have to unblock and permanently have to be a reporter in hope something changes?
Tbh that would triple the work for admins…
Why do you need to see what this person is saying after you’ve blocked them?
Good question…
Not sure what the best course of action is, perhaps just reporting, then blocking and hoping moderators make justice.
Dunno either, maybe just confronting…
This is why I don’t block, I just passively ignore.
I want to watch idiots shout into the void. No interaction, no downvotes, nothing. Their impotent rage makes me smile as I move on. That’s my fetish.
Why you little … gaaaaaah!!! (Turn you on yet?) Hello? Anyone? (Sploosh!)
There was a forum I used to lurk on. I hardly ever posted, but there were still some posters who were so annoying that I had to block them anyway, to not get aggravated while reading the good posters. In fact I remember now, it was worse than that. The forum software for some reason only let you block a maximum of 10 accounts at a time, and there were far more than 10 annoying posting accounts (though maybe fewer people behind them) at any given time. I ended up having to write my own software to ignore enough accounts. I had first resisted ignoring, but once I gave in to the feature, I went nuts with it and it was great.
That was a really good forum that became useless when trolls overran it. The owners fixed it by charging a one-time $5(?) fee to get an account (existing users didn’t have to pay). If they banned a troll account, they couldn’t really stop the troll from paying up to join again, but few bothered doing that. So that worked quite well and was a big relief. Not counting the trolls, it was an intense and nerdy forum that legitimate participants didn’t mind paying to join. It was eventually shut down with its archives deleted even though the parent site is still around. I don’t know why they did that and I think its archives could have some significant historical value. Oh well.
Edit: I may be mis-remembering how the fee worked. It might be that you had to be a paying member of the parent site, since I do remember sending money, though that might have been to access some unrelated site features.
Same. I tell some idiots that I’m going to block them and then just stop replying and enjoy watching them chuck a tantrum haha
This is like putting up a tall fence to obscure the view of your neighbors and being surprised they don’t cease existing on the other side
You don’t want to just block users, you want to unilaterally ban them
There’s a difference between fair and just
I want to stop them from engaging with me. I don’t want to let them keep engaging with me without my ability to see what they’re saying.
But if you don’t see what they’re saying, why do you care? How does it affect you?
What you want is to be able to silence them because you don’t like what they’re saying, ie censorship.
me personally? I don’t particularly care. i rarely use mute/block features.
but I understand that for some people, its a problem, because harassment doesn’t just end at insults, it can also be spreading rumours and talking shit.
its not going to be obvious to onlookers that one person has muted another, so if the harasser goes all over the victim’s posts saying terrible lies and rumours, then the victim should be able to know that and take action to stop it, even if the rumours aren’t against the community/instance ToS, and the victim can’t prove to the mods that the rumours are lies.
OK so you do want censorship.
yes, we all want some censorship.
defederation is censorship.
instance bans are censorship.
community bans are censorship.\is your position that none of those should be allowed?
if so, thats a wild position to take, but you should say it with your full chest at least.
if thats not your position, why are you drawing the line here? and why are you willing to die on this arbitrary hill?yes, we all want some censorship.
Speak for yourself.
defederation is censorship.
instance bans are censorship.
community bans are censorship.\
And I disagree with them.
is your position that none of those should be allowed?
My position is that it should all be up to the user. Let me block instances and communities if I don’t want to see them. Let me choose what content I want to see. I don’t need some mods deciding what is and isn’t acceptable based on their ideologies and beliefs, because as we all know and see every day, most abuse that power almost all the time.
if so, thats a wild position to take, but you should say it with your full chest at least.
It’s not wild at all, and I have never tried to hide it. I’ve said it openly many, many times on Lemmy. I think all censorship is bad. Only weak minded people want or need censorship.
Nice attempted “gotcha” though.
But that’s the right off the mod and the admin to express themselves through blocking and defederation. It sounds like you’re supporting compelled speech
I’m sorry, but I feel like you need to support the statement “This comes from discussions I’ve had with minorities about the harassment they face on Lemmy and mastodon” a bit more. Your whole argument for limiting the speech of others is predicated on this statement.
I’m not saying that minorities couldn’t face harassment on Lemmy, but Lemmy is by far the most liberal and minority supportive online forum I have ever experienced. Part of the reason Lemmy is so niche is because it doesn’t have the mainstream attention other platforms have and is heavily moderated.
If you are engaging in an instance where harassment is occurring the moderators generally ban the person quickly. If the moderators of that instance aren’t doing their job people generally leave and the instance dies from lack of content (there just aren’t that many people on Lemmy). If someone follows you from a different instance to another the current instance moderators will likely ban them even if the one you met them on doesn’t. Finally, if they are direct messaging you you can block them, they can continue to message you but you won’t see their messages and neither will anyone else.
What minority group have you talked with that are receiving harassment and what extra protections were needed that aren’t already here?
the discussion was 2 years old, so I’m a bit fuzzy - it looks like it was only 1 person. but it was enough to convince me from basically saying what yall are saying here “don’t expect privacy on a public site” to “there should be an attempt at privacy, and people facing harassment should have some measure of control to protect themselves”
I didnt feel the need to make the provide their credentials as a minority and prove to me that they’re being harassed and that muting the harasser wasn’t enough. What they said made sense.
Looking at the post you reference the person you talked to is a transgender person who moderates both LGBTQ+ and Transfem in Lemmy.blahaj.zone, they provide more than enough evidence of their minority status, but that wasn’t really needed. The question was what group was being harassed and thus this interaction would imply that the LGBTQ community is being harassed on Lemmy.
What I feel like you missed in your previous discussion is that the other person was talking about privacy in the context of being outed in the real world. The harassment being referred to was in the context of your real life identity being revealed or connected to your online conversation.
Under this context they are looking for a feature similar to how Facebook (at least previously) allowed you to pick who could see your post as you were posting it. That way you could individually disallow specific people or groups from seeing them.
This doesn’t imply that the issue is that someone is being harassed on Lemmy and thus we need better blocking options. It’s really only an issue for someone who wants to dox themselves and still have private conversations, in which case Lemmy and most online forums can’t accomplish that natively across all instances/subreddits/groups. The only solution is to have a private instance with vetting and heavy moderation. If you don’t dox yourself you can generally avoid the whole issue here.
Based on this I think you’re making a different argument than what the block feature is or ever could be.
You’re right, that was a different conversation. And I’m not part of that group so I can’t say for sure.
What I’m trying to do is take what I learned there and extrapolate it. I think there is some overlap.
At the very least, I don’t think OP deserves to be dragged like they were for what is to me a pretty reasonable take. In Lemmy, blocking someone acts like getting blocked on pretty much every platform, which is going to be confusing for many
Engagement is a two-way street. By blocking them you have stopped engaging with them.
The fact that you’re upset by what other people are doing somewhere that you can’t see and that doesn’t affect you seems like a you problem, frankly. Just forget about them.
This isn’t about me, this is about what people from persecuted minorities have told me they need, when I bought this exact argument to them.
I used to say what you’re saying them they described to be the harassment that they face
But they’re not being harassed because they can’t see it……
thats not the entire extent of harassment. harassment extends far beyond insulting someone to their face.
You can’t stop other people from badmouthing you behind your back. That’s just life. Accept it and move on. Trying to censor people because you don’t like what they’re saying is peak liberal fascism.
here, let me link you to the paradox of tolerance, you absolute mudcake.
try learning something.
In that case substitute “they” for “you” in my comment. The meaning remains the same, as does my position.
Oh god, did Lemmy turn into a libertarian hellscape while I wasn’t looking?
What are your opinions on community bans, since all your arguments apply equally to those. Let me see you rectify those positions.
When did an appreciation for free speech become the exclusive domain of the Libertarians? I don’t want you to be able to unilaterally silence me, therefore I’m a Libertarian?
What are your opinions on community bans, since all your arguments apply equally to those. Let me see you rectify those positions.
Community bans are the domain of a select few individuals who are responsible for maintaining the overall state of the community. If they abuse their power then the community suffers and people should go elsewhere.
Personally, I’d rather a system where one could “subscribe” to specific moderators so that if one goes rogue people could choose to unsubscribe from their moderation actions, that would IMO be the best combination of freedom and control. But I can understand that being rather complicated to implement well and perhaps a little confusing for the users, so I’m okay with the current setup as a compromise.
When did an appreciation for free speech become the exclusive domain of the Libertarians? I don’t want you to be able to unilaterally silence me, therefore I’m a Libertarian?
Minor nitpick with your comment: there’s a semantic difference between “Libertarian” and “libertarian”, and I suspect you want the latter.
Small-l “libertarian” is used to refer to the political ideology.
Big-L “Libertarian” is used to refer to the Libertarian Party.
The same sort of convention also shows up elsewhere, like “democrat” and “Democrat”, “republican” and “Republican”, etc.
How is “not letting you see what I personally wrote” consider to be “unilaterally silencing you” ?
What a mind bogglingly disingenuous response.I’m not saying that the reddit style block is good.
I’m saying that the current “mute” style block hangs vulnerable people out to dry.I’m ok trying something else, like maybe what you suggested.
This isn’t about me, this is about what people from persecuted minorities have told me they need, when I bought this exact argument to them.
The same arguments apply, though.
Your version of blocking doesn’t exactly handle the problem you’re describing well, either, as someone wishing to spread hate or “off-screen harassment” can block their direct target which, under the model, will mean they can’t see it, and then post.
Ah… Would reporting them rather than blocking be more appropriate, then? I recognize reporting isn’t always effective, but the right answer seems to be getting the community to police it rather than hiding your commentary from them.
And I recognize I’m speaking from a dearth of experience, here - this isn’t something I’ve dealt with, so I’m genuinely asking!
I’m generally trying to go off of a conversation I had with someone 2 years ago in lemmy. I was generally of the opposite opinion to my current stance, and they explained how the current “everything is public, dont even try to hide it from people” stance is problematic to persecuted minorities. It was 2 years ago so I’m a bit fuzzy on the details - I had to go look it up because someone didnt believe that the conversation even existed, but i didnt re-read the whole comment section.
their point was that, while total privacy in a federated service is likely impossible, you want to make it non-trivial for harassers to do harassment.
reporting is absolutely more appropriate than blocking, but blocking has a few advantages:
- its immediate, you dont need to wait for mods/admin.
- you don’t need to prove to an admin that something that the harasser said about you is actually a lie.
- mods/admins don’t need to be up-to-date on all the current dogwhistles
- it doesn’t need to actually affect the harasser beyond you. they dont need to get banned from the whole community or instance, unless the community or instance feels like they should be. its lower impact. This is important for lemmy communities that represent real communities, like classes or teams or neighborhoods.
If you can’t see the replies how can you possibly be harassed by it?
Because they can spread lies about me that I can’t see, to people who come to engage with me.
Not everyone is a stranger, you can have communities for real world groups.
If you care what they are saying, you shouldn’t block them. If you don’t care, you shouldn’t care they are commenting on you.
I don’t want other people being able to hide criticism of their posts/comments they don’t like from me. Allowing you to completely block engagement with your posts would just strengthen echo chambers and bolster misinformation IMO.
What I’m saying also protects vulnerable communities at least a little, and what you’re saying leaves them vulnerable.
If they’re able to comment on my content I’m my communities, then I need to be able to see if they’re spreading misinformation about me to my friends and acquaintances. Rather than just blind myself to that, I’d rather put barriers between my content and their ability to do that.
Imo protecting people from harassment is more important than protecting my ability to combat misinformation on some strangers’ posts.
You might be better served using the “report” button if you are indeed dealing with harassment. That would be the appropriate tool for such things.
But I am going to go out on a limb and guess that you want to be able to just unilaterally punish anyone you don’t like.
That’s a limb that wouldn’t support your weight.
I used to support your concept of block, until I was in a thread like this one, and someone from a minority community explained to me the consequences of these design decisions
You want to at the click of a button stop everyone from reading something you don’t want to see. If you dislike reading a persons comments, then you can block them and no longer see what they write. If you are being harassed you can report it, but what you want to do is police other users as a regular user.
You are also making the “won’t someone think of the children” argument as your (so far) only point.
This is a place of public discourse, what you want can be achieved using a txt editor and a friend.
“won’t someone think of the children” isn’t always wrong.
What’s absolutely crazy to me is that you say “blocking won’t work because they can get a new account” and then in the very same breath suggest that reporting is a viable strategy. Either it is or it isn’t, which is it?
Public/private discourse is a false dichotomy. What are your thoughts on a community’s ability to ban someone? Should groups lose that ability, since apparently it’s both ineffective and toxic, apparently?
Then go to a private platform. This is a platform for public discourse, not private communities.
PS: You could even make a community on lemmy and ban people as it’s moderator. Although a different platform may still be a better fit.
Yeah, fuck those minorities, amirite? They don’t deserve to use Lemmy anyways\
- you, a couple min ago
I had a feeling playing the victim and name calling was coming next after your last message.
But just in case anyone arguing in good faith needs it spelled out: Not every thing has to cater to every audience. Lemmy, at least for me, is primarily for sharing information, whether news, opinions or just memes. On such a site, I believe it is more important to avoid echo chambers and misinformation. So it requires a moderator or an admin to ban people. It’s not as if Lemmy is an unmoderated hellscape, it just leans more towards free speech over creating perfectly safe spaces than you may like. Avoiding echo chambers and misinformation benefits all users, including minorities. Therefore, every site hast to find a balance for it’s use-case. I would expect many people, whether minorities or otherwise, can handle occasional mean words or words they disagree with on their screens. But it is also alright if you are more sensitive or not in a good place psychologically and don’t want to deal with this. There are other places on the internet you can go, that do have the kind of blocking you want. Some places will lean towards free speech, some towards heavy moderation. That’s the great thing about the internet, not every place has to be the same.
Please go make your own place where those minorities (whoever they are) can do whatever they want.
- Them before you put words in their mouth to make a terrible argument.
i mean, i’ve linked you to the conversation I had.
have you tried to talk to anyone about it? or are you just some white dude confidently saying that nobody should change anything because it works for you, so it should work for everyone else?
because you really sound like that.
It’s not your content when you’re posting it in public forums. It’s public content.
If you want to be able to see when people spread “misinformation” about you, don’t block people.
the fact that there are only public forums on lemmy is a problem itself.
If you want to be able to see when people spread “misinformation” about you, don’t block people.
what are you even talking about here?
Blocks work the way you want them to on Reddit. And all it did was allow people with fringe political beliefs and misinformation fetishes to stop decent people from refuting them. This is for the best.
It also makes Lemmy objectively less safe because it’s much less effective at limiting stalking and harassment. Especially since way blocks work on Lemmy isn’t clearly communicated to the user.
If you block someone you will never see their harassment.
I get the feeling that some of those blocking people can’t suppress the urge to check what others are commenting to them, defeating the point of the block lol
Don’t make me tap the sign.
if the “Cyberbullying” stays online that is the correct solution, if the cyberbully starts influencing the real world you failed opsec and should bring it up with admins (/police depending on what it is)
The solution here is obvious - creating an instance and/or community with stricter moderation rules, much like blåhaj.zone.
Each instance/community has the ability to set their own general rules and whilst (yes) this means that an individual person can’t guarantee their “safety” everywhere it does mean anyone can create their own little bubble and then pick & choose which parts of the fediverse to connect with.
The fediverse is at its core a free speech project, which is why I like it. There are many other platforms out there that focus on safety.
As a point of reference, on Bluesky, it appears that if you’re blocked, you cannot see the account that blocked you. Essentially they just disappeared. They’ve not visible in search either.
So, unless you create another account, they ceased to exist.
Just to be clear, as far as I can tell, this invisibility is mutual as soon as one account blocks the other.
They can see, and they can comment, want screenshots?
Who can see?
My observation was based on personal experience after noticing that an account blocked me.
They are not refuting you. They are talking about how it is on Bluesky, as a point of reference. They are not talking about the fediverse.
This is why I use the block button and block lists frequently on Bluesky and not at all here. Actually does its job there.
Out of sight out of mind. 😊
Well yes, that’s what I tell my kids, but they could write anything and I couldn’t check it…
Ahh, I see the problem.
Blocking here is just ignoring people you don’t agree with, what you’re looking for is a way to punish them for not agreeing.
deleted by creator
There’s no block system on the whole of the internet that prevents that. Even if they couldn’t reply to your comments, they could reply to anyone else’s, or post a top-level comment, or make their own post entirely. What do you propose? Don’t let them even type your name?
I think what OP is wanting is “block this person from seeing/commenting on my posts” in addition to “block me from seeing this person’s posts.”
This is certainly possible (and exists) on many platforms, but is much more difficult on a federated platform. It becomes actually impossible if your posts are accessible to the unauthenticated public.
N.B. I’ll withhold judgment on whether full-stack blocking is beneficial, but there have been cases where this style of blocking is used to amplify echo chambers (e.g. Reddit). There is no perfect system besides simply staying the fuck off social media.
If I never see it, I’ll never care.
No, there’s enough nonsense going on, too many idiots and even more bots, it’s not punishment, there’s no way to have a conversation with people who don’t engage in any way that is productive, it’s a waste of my time
Got me in the first half, but no, I want them to leave me alone. That’s what ignore should be all about.
But they are leaving you alone. You can’t see their comment if you blocked them. They could be screaming like a monkey with rabies and you’ll never notice.
If the idea that they can still comment bothers you, then you indeed want to punish them, rather than just ignore them.
But they can still mock you without you witnessing.
What if someone is posting nonsense and you want to refute them? You want to silence others.
…and? They could do that that even without seeing your content.
Oh no! The potential that someone is mocking me, behind my back, without me witnessing or knowing it, really keeps me awake at night!
I mean, really. If you’ve gone so far as to block someone, do you even care that they’re mocking you?
If so, why? And are you aware that someone can mock you, or spread crap about you behind your back, without explicitly needing the ability to comment on your threads?
That’s always true. In real life, and online. You can’t control what people think or say.
If you want to witness it, don’t block them. It’s your peace of mind, you decide how to spend it.
But they are leaving you alone
But they’re really not though, if they’re commenting on your post, whether or not you can see it
When you have blocked someone, and they comment on your post, do they come to your front door and start yelling?
Are they standing across the road with a large, vulgar sign?
Do you get a phone call?
Do you in any way get notified?
Can you even see their comment?
If you answer “no” to the above, then you are left alone. They are no longer your concern. If you’re still concerned, then that’s a problem in your head.
Technically, that’s still leaving YOU alone. They’re just talking behind your back. And people I’ve blocked probably have, but I don’t know and I don’t care. I don’t need to silence others to stop listening to them.
Yes, they blocked me, and I’m calling them a nanner-head for all of you to see. But they don’t know they’ve been called a nanner-head behind their back, so they’ve been left alone. Now they only know they’re being called a nanner-head on the internet if someone shows them a screenshot. Being called a nanner-head behind their back on the public internet is not likely to affect them in real life, so what’s the harm?
Blocking on Lemmy is really just muting, and it should be called that.
A real blocking feature would be nice (it exists on other fediverse platforms).
The devs have said that blocking wouldn’t do anything because everything is public, so the blocked user could still access the content they are blocked from but frankly that’s bs. If that were true, then there would be no point of banning either, right?
Devs want a monopoly on the power to block people they don’t like through the use of bans (and they claim to be all for the people).
Devs want a monopoly on the power to block people they don’t like through the use of bans
Admins can ban on a per instance basis. Moderators can ban on a per community basis. But devs don’t have any particular banning power.
Well, the devs are also the major community moderators and admins on the ml instance, which was the largest for a long time.
They still treat it like their private walled garden.
I may be overreaching with my assumption about their motivations, but then again I may not.
Ehh. I don’t think that the underlying goal was to try to obtain some sort of “ban monopoly” on the Threadiverse. If they had, they had a ton of things that they could have done that they didn’t.
-
Don’t support federation in the first place.
-
Have lemmy.ml and friends simply disallow federation with other instances.
-
Break compatibility in new builds to make it harder for people to run other instances. Don’t open-source Lemmy in the first place.
Like, I think that it’s pretty lame that some of the official Lemmy software support stuff is communities on lemmy.ml, which has an admin situation that I don’t really like. But…that seems like an awfully weak lever to be pulling if someone’s goal is to try to exclude anyone else from having the ability to restrict users.
I’m more expressing frustration that they have been approached multiple times about fixing the broken blocking by either renaming it muting (what it actually is), or creating an actual blocking feature. The excuses they provide are nonsensical.
Blocking protects users. Why would a federated platform not want to protect users?
I’ve got a top-level comment about why I’d rather not have a feature of the form OP requested. Reddit’s block feature originally worked the way the Threadiverse’s block feature presently does. It was later changed, and that change introduced problems.
However, that being said, I do think that there may be a real UI issue if people think that they’re preventing responses, but aren’t actually doing so, and get frustrated. That’d be a legit UI issue.
considers
I don’t think I’d use “mute”. In IRC, “mute” refers to a moderation action more analogous to what OP wants. I think that that could still produce confusion.
Usenet uses “kill”, for “killfile”, in the sense of “automatically killing posts from a user”. Probably not a great choice either.
Maybe “ignore” would be better than “block”, though. I think that that would make it unambiguous what the operation is doing. I’m guessing that the Lemmy devs just chose “block” because Reddit happened to use it, didn’t put a whole lot of thought into it.
Related story: I once worked with a guy who had worked on Yahoo Maps, way back when. It was one of the first mapping services to provide navigation instructions. He told me that he was the one who had, at some point, suggested “bear” as a verb for the navigation decisions (e.g. “bear right”). It was a pretty off-the-cuff decision, but apparently it’s confusing to some people, since “bear” isn’t a terribly-commonly-used term and can potentially be confused with the animal of the same name. IIRC, Yahoo Maps ultimately changed it, years later, but I understand that not only did they use the term for quite some years, but some other services also copied it, so it had considerable inertia.
kagis
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/kid-gps-instructions-bear-right/
-
Would you rather make your blocklists public?
I would be in favor of public blocklists, to be honest. At least let the person know that you’ve blocked them, and so you will not see any of their replies.
No everybody deals with anybody in a different way.
There’s literally no way in a federated environment to prevent blocked accounts from interacting with your posts without making your blocked accounts list public
What I’d really like is if comment downvotes were public.
They are on some instances.
You just have to enable it in your client, presuming your instance supports it.
On Voyager it’s in Settings -> Appearance -> Other -> Display Votes -> Separate.
I think they might have meant the identity of the voter, not just the specific number, but this one’s a great feature as well
Gotcha. https://lemvotes.org/
What I mean is that I would like to see the usernames of everyone who downvoted.
This is seriously excellent. Now I can tell who downvoted my comments. I had even previously tried to look through the public lemmy API to see if I could find this information. Thank you!
People who only socialize online are often too cowardly to handle it, as they use downvotes sometimes as a way to disagree/show their disapproval without standing by it, and would be terrified if they had to explain why they did so. 🤷
95% of the time when downvoting content it’s a question of…
Disagreeing/considering the content bad/thinking the user is behaving poorly.
Also, writing comments takes a lot more time, which (believe it or not) is a limited and valuable resource for most people on the internet.
That’s okay, but it should be visible to everyone that you agreed or disagreed, for the sake of clarity, honesty and responsible communication. Ideally, votes wouldn’t exist (and if you don’t have anything to say in the forum or simply don’t want to, well, you just don’t and you lurk quietly), but if such low-level ways of engaging with the topic are allowed then we shouldn’t be afraid to at least have that vote public, IMO.
for the sake of clarity, honesty and responsible communication
No? We’re already using pseudonyms, which is intentional and has a purpose.
at least have that vote public, IMO
It already is public, just not easily accessible. Why do you want to know all the votes? A voter is not an active part of the conversation. I’d equate it to the audience cheering or booing on a talk show.
For the ones actively participating you can read their comments and it’ll be obvious what their stance is.
Ideally, votes wouldn’t exist
Absolutely disagree on that one. Votes are a fundamental part of this type of social media, and the low-pressure interaction of up/down votes encourages a large number of people to interact and rank content. This shifts focus from the loudest/most active people dominating the space to the most widely appreciated content dominating the space. This is explicitly one of the parts I like about it.
Also, more replies are not necessarily useful. Consider all the “This!” or “Same!” comments from Reddit. An up/down vote is much more information dense.
Honestly it sounds to me like you actually want a forum based on fundamentally different mechanics. Technically it wouldn’t be that difficult to create a Lemmy clone that just scraps votes entirely from the UI, but you’d need a new way to rank content.
In an ideal scenario I’d actually prefer the votes be entirely anonymous, but that’s just not feasible with the fediverse system.
