I try to give the most grace possible. I’ve only ever blocked two users here. That said, I’d totally understand why someone might block me.
I try to give the most grace possible. I’ve only ever blocked two users here. That said, I’d totally understand why someone might block me.
It’s pointless blocking people if that means they can still see and reply to you. Why even bother?
You can’t see them, that’s the point. You block users, comms or instances you don’t want to see on your timeline.
You don’t get to decide what other people want to see on theirs
Strong agree. If blocking also means they can’t see your posts or comment on it, then that becomes primarily a way for trolls to attack and block anyone who disagrees with them
That’s not it because it’s not about deciding for others, but about deciding for your own posts. I should be able to decide on my visibility.
You have control over your visibility, anything you don’t want people to see, you don’t put in the internet.
Where do you get this idea?
Where do you get the idea that it is at all possible to stand up on your soapbox in the town square, addressing every Tom, Dick, and Harry, yet keeping certain members of the public from hearing your speech?
When I logout of my instance, you can’t distinguish me from any other anonymous user. I’m part of the anonymous masses. If you want to keep me from seeing your content, you can’t post it for the anonymous masses to see.
Facebook (and other proprietary, centralized services) give the impression that this can be done, but the way they are doing it is by refusing to show content to anonymous users. You can’t do that with federated services.
its the same way on reddit, you block them but you could still see thier content, i dont think they can reply to you, but someone else on that comment chain though.
That was a late-stage enshittification; it’s only been that way for a few years, and it was primarily used to suppress dissent.
It is absolutely not something we should be porting over to the fediverse.
So those replies won’t show up in my inbox of course
But then that’s not really blocking, that’s just hiding users.
Well idc about the semantics, the fact is it is useful and there is a good reason to use it. Personally I think the “they can’t see or reply to you anymore” style of “block” is super toxic and Reddit switching to that model was a major factor in its decline. It is very easily weaponized and basically amounts to giving powerusers moderation powers. If someone who makes a lot of popular posts or top level comments blocks you under that model, that instantly limits your ability to participate, and no one ever gets to know this is happening or to what extent. The most obvious way this gets abused is by commercial spammers trying to monopolize relevant subs by blocking everyone who may call them out or post competing content, but it also shuts down disagreement and debate; if you have something controversial to say and don’t want it to look like any good objections exist, you can just silence your best critics. It also gets commonly used by people right after they write an inflammatory reply to ensure they get the last word.