The only way to protect yourself from trolls and stalkers on X.

Technology@lemmy.world – 192 points – 1 months ago

The only way to protect yourself from trolls and stalkers on X - Hypertext

htxt.co.za

A notice from X (formerly Twitter) stating: 'Block is changing soon. If your posts are set to public, accounts you have blocked will be able to view them, but they will not be able to engage. For more control over who can see your posts, you can still protect your account.' There is an 'OK' button at the bottom of the notice.

X is telling users that blocking will soon be useless and trolls and stalkers will soon be able to see their posts again.

Instead of blocking, X advises that users take their account private, the antithesis to what X and its progenitor Twitter was about.

This removal of blocking may violate Apple and Google’s policies regarding platforms that host user generated content.

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Step 1 delete your X account.

Step 2 create a mastodon account

You're right, blocking doesn't matter when there's no one to block.

Mastodon also doesn't let you prevent people from reading your posts.

I can no longer see posts made on a Mastodon instance ran by an ableist piece of shit after I called her an ableist piece of shit, so even Mastodon has this feature.

Correct workflow

This is the first time I'm exploring this, but I think you're wrong.

On Mastodon you can:

Control who's following you (also block)
Set your post to appear only to your followers (link)

So post visibility is not something you set per profile, but per post. But you have an effective tool to decide who you let in AND remove on the way.

I think it theoretically can't be done. The protocol allows anyone to query for posts, and it has to work that way unless you want to move ActivityPub federation to an invite-only system. On most servers I think browsing while being logged out is sufficient, just like on pre-Musk Twitter.

The block feature works on Mastodon as it does most places. Lemmy seems to be the only weird place where blocking isn't a fully-featured option.

That's a better way, I agree.

This was my first thought too, hah.

I do miss my traffic closer alerts, but that's all.

Right, but you’re smart enough to know it’s the right thing to do. Many aren’t , sadly.

Every time someone makes a blanket demand like 'everyone just get off Twitter,' and I ask why I should, the answer is more or less: 'I don’t like Elon, so I don’t want anyone using his platform.'

I’ve yet to figure out why I should care how somebody else feels about what I do online. I don't like TikTok either yet I don't go around telling people to get off the platform.