They shouldn’t be able to do that!
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.
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.
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.
If they are running their own communities yes they can. Mods can and do ban people from the communities.
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.
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
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.m, especially when you’re the one crying over people saying mean things behind your back lol.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
Edit: Give persecuted minorities a way to protect themselves.
This comes from discussions I’ve had with minorities about the harassment they face on Lemmy and mastodon, and the currentblockmute feature is more harmful than helpful.If you’re using “block” to curate your content, then it works great. If you’re trying to prevent harassment, then it’s counterproductive
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
