this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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What you're saying makes sense, but I think the big issue here is that blocking as it currently works on Reddit is harmful because it's too easy to abuse. If the only reason for the change is familiarity, then you'll just make the platform worse for actual users just to lessen the barrier of entry.
So, why does any platform even need this, besides familiarity? If you don't want to see a user, hiding them from you will achieve that perfectly.
I really can only think of malicious reasons. Shutting down an argument or badmouthing someone without giving them a means to respond or defend themselves.
Like, if it's to avoid stalkers, this would do literally nothing to achieve that. They can just log out and continue doing what they were doing.
I don't think kbin should be blindly adopting bad ideas even if everyone else does them. If it was actually beneficial, sure, have kbin go for it. But this doesn't seem to solve a problem, nor does it actually improve our quality of life. Rather, it does the opposite. It introduces a problem we could just do without by keeping what we have currently.
This is really not a problem on reddit, especially in the face of rogue moderators doing the same thing, except on the scale of a subreddit. Nobody
I explained it many, many times throughout this thread. Harassment is bad. People's expectation to be able to block harassers is not just familiar, it's good. People should be able to free themselves from harassment—not just from knowing they're being harassed.
Right now, the assholes I blocked could, for all I know, be chasing me around the fediverse commenting on everything I say. They could be stalking me. They could be doxxing me. This is too easy to abuse.
On top of that, these threats make it dangerous to even use the muting feature against those real assholes. Muting only makes sense for people you find mildly annoying. I'm afraid when I mute a harasser, afraid that their harassment will continue, that I won't be able to reply to it, and that people will believe every nasty, bigoted thing they say about me. My only chance at safety comes from blocking them.
Muting serves the same function, only punishing the person who uses the mute function instead. Thereby discouraging use of the mute function and perpetuating toxic debate. Toxic debates need to end, they should be shut down—not for a winner or a loser, but because they make everybody's lives worse and really don't enhance access to the truth. Insults should be shut down, rather than going back and forth ad infinitum. Harassment should be shut down. These are not free speech—you can speak freely anywhere. Persistently talking to somebody who doesn't want to hear your bullshit is harassment.
This will do a lot to prevent stalkers, because even if the stalkers realize they need to log out to stalk the user, they now lose every "follow" function, every logged-in function, and have to stalk the user manually. Most stalkers will never do that—they will lose steam the second they realize they've been blocked, and go worry about something else.
"blindly" while I've explained the issue throughout the thread? This is exhausting.
Thanks for the writeup, it helped me see things from your perspective. I don't fully agree, but I get now why you're asking for this.
What I'm wondering now is, does the fediverse actually support the kind of block that's being asked for here? Like, is there precedent on this being implemented on other platforms like Mastodon or Lemmy? The issue here is that kbin isn't in control of who sees your posts, I wonder if it's actually possible to implement this in the first place.
If you actually believe this, you're a bit shortsighted. This is the fediverse, people can just jump onto a different instance. And even on Reddit multiple accounts for the same person were allowed.
People can also run their own personal instance which doesn't honor those blocks.
Yea, that's where I'm thinking the hangup on this might be. A block could be implemented, but it'd come with the caveat of that all it's doing is giving you the idea they aren't continuing to engage with you on your instance. On their instance, and any instance that federates with them, they and others will continue to see the replies.
Personally, I would like to see block renamed to mute to be more accurate and a block from replying added with the note about the drawbacks of them being able to tell you blocked them and their posts still going out everywhere else. That at least empowers the user to make the decision themselves on what they're most ok with. My reasoning is: changing the UI for, let's say an aggressor, gives them a reason to retaliate. To me, either blocking method is a lose-lose; either it doesn't stop engagement which some users clearly want it to, or it makes it obvious someone is being blocked which start aggressors down the retaliation path. That's kind of why I'd want users to make their own risk assessment on actions.
Anyways, that's all very unlikely to happen. Most of all I'd like the bug about notifications fixed because that is clearly not working as intended.