They shouldn’t be able to do that!
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.
Seems ideal, then they won’t know they’re blocked.
That should be a separate function: Muting, Ignoring, or maybe “Shadow Blocking”.
Regular Blocking should prevent direct replies completely.
EDIT: There also should be an option to make all or specific comments “Viewable by logged in & unblocked users only”. For maximum separation.
The posting server would have to honour that, though
Could be something negotiated between servers to continue being federated with them. I don’t think it’d be a huge ask.
Worst case though, only people within the replier’s server would see their replies. That’s better than nothing.
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.
I’m more annoyed by losing the “Block Community” button when a sub’s admin blocks me.
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.
How do you do that? I’m on voyager and didn’t know about this. I would love tags
Settings>User Tags>Track Votes! :D
Awesome! Ty!
Yup, it’s pretty rad! To add or remove stuff on a user account, tap their name then use the three do a in the upper-right to get to tags. From there, it’s easy peasy!
And its on froid
Thanks that’s useful!
You’re +8 for me!
And you cook better than you insult!
That could be. I guess I’ve got a tag!
Blocking someone is not a tool to silence them. It’s a tool to ignore them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The mods can ban you, but anyone can block you and stop you from commenting on threads they are involved in.
Aren’t blocks visible on reddit though? It’s been a while since I used it, so maybe I forgot. At the very least, it was considered bad form there outside of direct harassment. I think I was only stalked and harassed once though reddit comments and I just called them out on it to end it.
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.
If you don’t want everyone seeing your activity, don’t post it on a public internet system. Blocks can easily be circumvented.
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.
Discord recently made this distinction; it makes sense imo
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.
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.
But even that case doesn’t work because someone could use a different account (or no account at all) to do the stalking.
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”.
Someone else in this thread pointed out that this would just encourage bad actors to make sock puppet accounts to get around being blocked.
Bad actors already do that.
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.
A lot of people here never had a stalker and it shows.
I don’t think blocking is an effective measure.
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.
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.
Bluesky differentiates between blocking and muting. Bluesky blocking is like what you describe, which is also how Reddit blocking works. Bluesky muting is like Lemmy blocking, where they can engage on your posts, you just won’t see it.
However bluesky is not decentralized. This is handled by their appview, which other bluesky clients might change
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.
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.
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?
Excellent point tbh
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.
Perhaps some people want others reading what they post online but don’t want to be bullied.
You can block bullies. They can continue to waste their time writing mean messages but those will never reach you.
This sounds like the words of an abuser.
Please rethink your life
Huh . I will.
Keep in mind, they edited their comment. It was pretty scummy before.
That’s just an unhinged thing to say.
Also, while other location 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).
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.
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
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.
Why not start your own TV discussion threads with blackjack and hookers?
Evento better, with blahaj and hookers.*
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.
i had several instances on reddit, where the person commenting evaded a block by using a new account.
Not sure if it’s the same on Lemmy, but on Mastodon, your blocks are definitely shared to other instances. So the instance of the user you blocked definitely stores that you’ve blocked their user. And their system admin can view if their user has been blocked (via the PostgreSQL db).
Technically, hiding your posts from your intended blockee should be doable. But someone could run a modified version of Mastodon and display content from people who have blocked them.
Or just create a new account.
I’m unsure if Lemmy is coded in this same way (storing remote blocks on instances of the blocked user).
You can show them even if you don’t allow them to comment.
