What do you block people for?
Do you have a criteria for what qualifies as block-worthy offence or are you just doing it when you feel like it?
Bonus question: how long is your block list?
Do you have a criteria for what qualifies as block-worthy offence or are you just doing it when you feel like it?
Bonus question: how long is your block list?
My blocklist is 30~40 users long. [For reference, my blocklist in Reddit reached 400 or so.]
To keep it short, I typically block people who, egregious or consistently:
Note that "egregious or consistently" are key words here. Like, I'm not going out of my way to block someone out of a brainfart; this is not some sort of petty revenge, it's just removing from my sight people who I believe to not contribute with my overall Lemmy experience. I also don't take issue when people block me, for whatever reason they might have.
I'll reply to myself to avoid editing the above. The other user made me realise that what I said about pass-aggro is unclear - since the expression is used with multiple meanings.
In this specific context, by passive aggressiveness, I mean "an utterance showing politeness as a disguise for rudeness".
I'll give you guys an example. Imagine that Alice says "I saw a potato tree today". And Bob replies to Alice one of the following:
The first three are not pass-aggro. #1 is simply dry (no attempt at politeness or rudeness); #2 is simply rude (I'm typically OK with that within limits). #3 uses irony and sarcasm in such an obvious way that it comes off as simply rude, there's no attempt to use the irony to disguise the insult. Only #4 is pass-aggro, as it calls Alice stupid and lazy in a disguised way.
I tend to block people who do this because they rub me off the wrong way - it shows a lack of dignity to be upfront that you don't see in plain rudeness.
Sealioning is a made up term by those too lazy to explain a concept and looking to antagonise others because they "cannot possibly be unaware of X fact that I care so much about".
Funnily enough saying someone is sealioning falls within the passive-aggressive behaviour you seem to despise so much.
Sealioning is the discussion equivalent of a DoS (denial of service) attack. In both, the content of the reply is irrelevant; the goal is to flood the person/machine with multiple requests, until they reach a limit and
stop droppingdrop the requests altogether.And while the concept has some problems because it handles some esoteric babble called "intentions" (see: "goal"), it's still useful when you focus on the behaviour instead.
Pass-aggro is about tone, not content. You can state something like "you're sealioning" in a passive aggressive way, or a rude way, or under a bald-on record, so goes on.
[Edit reason: phrasing.]
Tankies go straight to the Shadow Realm
I block assholes. It drives me up the wall when someone is disrespectful for no reason. I also dislike those who get unnecessarily aggressive on the first message because the previous comment doesn't align with their views. I'll usually set a boundary and let people correct their attitude. After that, I'll block.
I'm also considering blocking those who make a hobby of subverting the previous comment by twisting people's words and overloading them with something the person did not mean to say, but those are trickier.
What do you have against hobbies? Why do you think that people should only eat, work and sleep? Do you loathe people that much??? /s
Serious now. I block this sort of people, and heavily recommend others to do the same. They're a waste of time; even if you clarify what they're distorting they'll do it again, and again. It is a bit tricky because genuine miscommunication also happens, but I typically solve that by checking the profile for consistent behaviour. The "controversial" sorting works wonders here.
Pretty much my criteria exactly. An off remark is fine, we all fuck up once in awhile, but consistent rude or dishonest behaviour gets them a block. It's not worth my time and emotional energy to deal with angry children. I get enough of that at work already.
What I think is funny is someone I blocked also responded to your comment.
Yeah, I have no patience for these types. Just dealt with one. They love to assume something weird and awful that no one would've meant and then harass you about it. I struggle not to be rude to dickheads like that.
That's why I tag people who do this. It becomes much easier to figure out who is consistently being a shithead or pushing an agenda.
What are you using to tag users? I want to do this too.
EDIT: nevermind, you mentioned it in another comment (Boost). It wouldn't work for me as I'm using Lemmy from a computer. Still, it's some great functionality, I wish that it existed for the web interface too. (There was/is a Firefox extension for that in Reddit, and I miss it. It wasn't only useful to tag "bad" users, but also good ones - I used it all the time in r/linguistics to tag the expertise area of some laymen.)
It's definitely a feature that's sorely needed for the browser versions.
i feel like thats more of a turbo-redditor-moved-to-lemmy thing
I’ve blocked a few bots but I would only block an actual person if they’re harassing me. I’d rather downvote or report people that are saying hateful things.
Ad hominem -> block.
Mostly just tankies, they irritate the hell outta me.
I have 85 people blocked. Most of them for spamming, probably. The rest for harshing my mellow by aggressively being assholes to others or just because I've realized my personal experience is more pleasant with their absence.
I don't owe my attention to anyone. I see lots of comments here about refusing to censor alternate points of view, but that's not it. I can enjoy healthy disagreement, but some folks make some agenda their entire identity and I just get tired of them constantly injecting it into every conversation.
On the other hand there've been many people I've disagreed with, engaged with, found some common ground, and continue to enjoy their presence even knowing we don't see eye to eye. Or, if they post about other things, I just ignore the rants I disagree with. It's not filtering out points of view, it's filtering out people whose presence makes Lemmy a source of stress rather than an interesting, vibrant community. That's obviously very subjective, but it's my block list and my peace of mind.
The people who constantly post about Gaza in every single thread are the worst in this regard. While yes, the genocide isn't okay and it should be discussed, there's a time and place and it doesn't need to be brought up everywhere in every discussion. Many of them are needlessly hostile when this is brought up to them and you just get labeled a genocide supporter. Sometimes I just want to scroll and read threads without hearing about children dying all the time. Gaza is their entire personality and it seems like nothing else matters to them in their lives.
Not tagging NSFW posts
2
You usually block people for good audience sight-lines and sensible character interactions. It can also communicate relationships non-verbally.
And you want to avoid awkward shuffling as they enter and exit the stage.
Blocking is important in film as well, but less so due to close ups, shot reverse-shoot, and editing.
I don't block people because I think it's important to understand that people have different viewpoints and ways of articulating them
There are other reasons to block as well. Simply just being an asshole is not a viewpoint I think anyone should be paying attention to.
Right. Blocking people for no other reason than "I disagree" or "I don't like that" turns the place in to an echo chamber. Like, if that's what you want, fine, but one reason I left Reddit was to get out of the echo chamber.
Posting/commenting right wing garbage or tankie “North Korea is a great place” bullshit. Also flat earther crap. Pretty much any insane, out of touch with reality stuff.
I've banned 1074 accounts from the instance I run, most of them for boring reasons like spam. Usually between 1 and 10 per day.
My block list has I think 7 people on it. I only block if someone makes my Lemmy experience worse any time I see something from them. Disagreement I am fine with. It's healthy to see other viewpoints, even if I don't agree. (Or if it's an issue of morality, like not viewing minorities as people, a grim reminder that people think like that. Fortunately by the time I see those, someone else has replied on the matter.) Being inflammatory and adding no value to any discussions is what gets you blocked for me. I know I have blocked several spammers, but it appears that their accounts got deleted.
I have blocked many communities though. It's mostly porn. Furry porn, not for me. Anime porn where the subjects look too young... Just don't want to see that. Porn that just isn't my taste. I would just block NSFW but there is some NSFW that isn't necessarily porn that I want to see. (Ex: frank discussions about anatomy)The stuff that isn't porn is just communities that are inflammatory echo chambers.
I browse all because I don't have many subscriptions that are active, so that is why I have so many communities blocked.
That seems to be all of it. The amount of pedo bullshit on this platform is staggering. I still see it even with instance and keyword filters.
I don't block people, even if someone is being stupid I doubt I'd run into them that often again. But of course, if someone was personally harrassing me, I'd block, it just hasn't happened here.
If someone is harassing you, IMO the best approach is not blocking but contacting the admins; either of your instance or the person's instance. If you simply block the person they'll keep harassing you, but now on your back as you won't see their comments.
I block people for my own peace of mind. If they want to follow behind me and be public assholes, they are just showing everyone else who they are.
A bunch of my innocuous posts wind up with a single lonely downvote. It makes me laugh because someone out there is really fucking butthurt over something I don't even remember any more.
When it's just for your own peace of mind, or just some muppet downvoting you all the time, that's fine. However, harassment strictu sensu often causes social repercussions that harm the person being harassed, even if they're oblivious to that. And often harassers don't just stop at one person, they pick multiple targets; it is not the sort of people who you want in a community.
So often it's simply better for you and everyone else to report them instead.
Yeah just hiding the content of people who harass you is really not a good practice. It's the whole reason why Reddit introduced two-way blocking, they know that this type of harassment can't actually be combated by simply ignoring it. Here on Lemmy we don't have that, the next best thing though is to report to admins or Community moderators, but I would recommend admins since they can take care of the users more efficiently.
Yeah I agree these types of people really should not be in communities and instances. While it may be up to moderators and admins to ban people on the site and communities, it is us the users who are responsible for bringing these types of bad people to their attention, by reporting and reaching out.
Think of being a user on these sites as being like part of a neighborhood watch all the time. You are obligated to report people who are behaving suspicious or in ways that are harmful to the community. Maybe if one or two people ignore them it's fine but if a majority of people do this it won't be, and isn't. It's part of the reason why I think that there are so many trolls and bad faith actors here who never get banned from communities or instances despite the fact that they have zero restraint about where and when they lash out at someone. It's because people just block those guys and never report them.
Well said.
I think Lemmy's devs seem to not understand this problem otherwise they would've kept a version of two way blocking in Lemmy and wouldn't fight this idea so much:
Proper blocking systems for preventing harassment need to at a basic level stop people from replying to the user or their content. People can argue that this can be abused but not having it will be abused more in exactly the same way you said.
I think that it would be possible to implement true/two-way blocking while minimising the amount of abuse, if the blocklist is public. As in, if Alice simply mutes Bob, nobody knows it; but if Alice blocks Bob, you can see in Alice's profile "blocking: Bob".
I also think that the mute / block user option needs to have a confirmation window. From this thread it's obvious that a lot of people are muting bad faith users, instead of reporting them. That's bad because the problems never reach the ears of those who can act on them.
(I'm just throwing ideas around, mind you. Take them with a grain of salt, there might be some catch that I didn't realise.)
Yeah I do think there needs to be confirmation since it is way too easy to just quickly mute a lot of people in rapid succession.
I'm not sure if making them public is a great idea, since people might be bad faith trolls but that might not be apparent to other people at first glance. I probably would have at least 50 on my list if it were a feature, to someone who doesn't know it might seem like I'm abusing the system but almost all of those people were either harassing me or others. Many have been banned but not all of them. Maybe it could be visible to admins, but not general users.
I'm not even really sure how big of an issue blocking abuse really is in reality, since on Reddit many of the people who complain about it are trolls in and of themselves, some of the people complaining about the changes to the blocking system are actually suspended currently. So not really sure it is a real problem. Abuse of the muting feature though is a much more serious problem because if all or most people just do this all the time instead of reporting eventually instances and communities become overrun with trolls and bad faith actors because people are not reporting them, meaning the only ones who would get actioned are the ones caught explicitly by the mods and admins. Not good.
I think that making blocks visible only for admins could work. At least the admins of the instances of both users.
I'd say it's concerning, specially due to hit-and-run tactics - replying to someone and blocking them before they have the chance to counter-reply. I used this a fair bit for shitposting and taunting circlejerks*, but it could be easily used also to make the other side look like lacking arguments (i.e. for public manipulation of views) or also for individual harassment.
One of the counter-strategies that I've seen was people editing their comments and highlighting that they were blocked. That only works when the person knows that they were blocked.
*my last years in Reddit weren't exactly "contributing" with that place.
I think this type of two way blocking makes it particularly clear when the person is blocked since it disallows replying and on Lemmy community bans are visible. So editing comments can help with that, as it would be apparent they have blocked you, the UI could be changed to reflect that either by highlighting the user who has blocked you or greying out the reply button. Of course that could be used as an abuse tactic but since it depends on existing replies which are finite it wouldn't be as bad as them being able to continue making more.
Also since administration on Lemmy is much more in touch with the userbase (at least most of the time) it's easier to get such abuse dealt with at the community or instance level.
It's best to report people who engage in harassment, trolling, and bad behavior in-general. That way they can be identified and actioned by moderators and admins.
In the case of people on other sites it's best to message the admins of the other server directly so they may take action accordingly.
Blocked bots or blatant ads
People that are needlessly hostile, and persistent on continuing their hostility get blocked. I've only needed to do that 1 or 2 times on Lemmy since I already blocked the most overtly hostile instances.
Same. I probably won’t even notice if I keep running into them making the place toxic, but if they just want to argue or be offensive and won’t stop, yeah I’ve blocked a couple
I wish that more people would report the users who behave like this, that type of behavior is against many Community rules and also many instance rules.
In my opinion I'd rather report people than block them since when they get banned they get banned for everyone. Blocking is like pretending to ban them while letting them run wild, it's a great idea for places like Nostr but it's not a great idea for Lemmy since the whole idea of fediverse is interconnection with moderation.
I've never blocked someone. Idk why. Maybe too much action for something that doesn't make any big difference.
This isn't meant to judge over people who block others, there could be good reasons like stalking etc.
I think I’ve blocked one or two people on lemmy. Only because they like to spam posts all at once and it will fill up an entire page with just their shit.
Outside of that I’ve never blocked anyone, nor do I ever really want to block anyone.
Ah I see, that's more like a content block. Wouldn't a filter do the same, I bet they spam to the same topics?
The topics weren't an issue. The issue is more with Lemmy's sorting algorithm not being great.
You may want to try out scaled sort if your instance supports it, most of them do these days. Only a very small handful of archaic instances have not updated to 0.19.x yet.
Scaled sorting is what caused that issue. Active or hot don't really have that issue since they're more likely to show slightly older but highly voted things. VS scaled which will just dump all 20 posts from one person even though nobody has voted on them.
It does actually make a difference. Especially on a small platform like Lemmy. I'd say that around 50% of the time that I see a blocked user make a comment and I log out to read it, it just confirms that blocking them was the right choice.
Man I wish we had a "flag" option as an alternative. I don't wanna block anyone because sometimes I still wanna read their comments/posts.
I just want to flag them so when I come across them again I can keep in mind that they did a no-no before. You could even use it to categorize (this user is a spammer, this one a troll, etc.)
I know that some apps and browser extensions do this, but I really think that it's important for Lemmy itself to have an existing notes feature as part of the server software and backend, which allows your notes to be saved as part of your account.
Mastodon has this feature and lets you leave notes on users' profiles. I do this a lot on there. I guess there isn't any reason why you couldn't use Mastodon's version of it if you regularly post to Lemmy communities from Mastodon, but since I and many others are lemmy users, and post + read from here it's good to have that feature available on this server's software natively.
There's a few alternatives to reddit pro tools that let you do this. I forget which one I had installed before but it had some basic tagging.
Boost lets you tag users so you can figure out who is consistently beint shitty. I think a few other apps also have that functionality.
I need that for the opposing reason. Sometimes people write so good comments that I don't want to block them for the stupid comment they write the next day.
I don’t block people either because my mom didn’t raise no pussies.
Some people are just completely deranged, like, pathologically deranged. Those people just annoy me, and I don't want to get annoyed/angered every time I read their bullshit.
I usually tag problematic users (usually those who constantly discuss in bad faith, are needlessly hostile or rude towards other users, or push dis/misinformation and propaganda) so I know who are repeat offenders with consistent bad behaviour, but I rarely block people unless it's very clear that they have no interest in participating in good faith or are so irritating that I can't deal with them anymore. A lot of problematic users still have valuable things to say and I'd rather not make my feed an echo chamber, even if those people often piss me off with their nonsense. But with some of them it sure is tempting.
In my case, most users I've blocked were for shitty behavior. I have zero tolerance for that. If someone speaks to me or others in a way they wouldn’t dare to in real life, I block them instantly. I don’t mind disagreements or different opinions, but I won’t waste time with mean or nasty people.
The second most common reason is shallow, one-sentence replies only meant to fish for upvotes without adding value to the discussion. Jokes are fine, but if you're just echoing what's popular for applause, you’re gone. Nothing wrong with that per-se, but I’m more interested in serious conversations.
Lastly, there are petty reasons. For example, overused phrases like 'fuck around and find out' will get you blocked too.
You must've blocked 200 people by now
Furries, gay porn, sports, and posts in languages I don't understand.
Pretty much this plus vegans.
There are loads of vegans that are lovely, reasonable people, but unfortunately they get shadowed by the much less reasonable outspoken ones.
I'm a "carny" btw
I dont block them unless they show themselves as unreasonable and hostile. I typically get fed up reading headlines like meat eaters blah blah kill dont care blah doom methane anti farming pro avocado. when you try to debate anything out, there is zero sense of reasoning beyond their agenda. Those braindeads get blocked. I'm not interested in reading or hearing anything they have to say. The same as anyone who posts futo porn. I dont care if your gay little ass gets turned on by cartoon animals with dicks. I dont want to see that shit.
You block other users for mentioning sports?
Posts, not comments. But sure. I can do that.
Me, in the meantime: "fuck, now I need to know what's written there!", followed by machine translation, followed by a bored "...ah."
(Replace the bored "...ah." with some genuine laugh when it's something from szmer.info. I don't speak Polish but people in that instance have an odd sense of humour, that I enjoy quite a bit.)
If you're a massive tool or a spambot I'll block you.
My block list is pretty small and most of 'em are advertising spambots I've encountered. Only, like 3 of them are dicks.
I haven't blocked anyone individually, but I found blocking hexbear and lemmygrad made an immediate vast improvement.
Is kemmygrad a problem? I've had my fair share of reasons to block hexbear
Saying shit that makes me think they'll be a reliably crazy contributor to conversations.
Annoying me
If it sounds subjective as shit, that's because it is. It follows my vibe for that day.
I'm happy to block people. I don't owe anybody my time or energy, if they're tedious and annoying in situation a, they probably will be in B as well.
Its the internet, I just dont care. I'm going to make my experience tolerable and if I can't I'll leave. 🤷♂️
I agree. I could block 90% of the people online and there would still be an endless feed of new content to pay attention to. I don't miss anything by blocking users that I wouldn't be missing either way.
Only if they're very annoying and waste everyones time. And annoying bots. I've changed instances and now my blocklist is only one bot. Usually when I'm offended, it's spam. Rarely someone getting personal and yelling at people. I report that and usually the account gets suspended and I don't need to block anything. I'm not hesitant, though. If someone wastes my time more than once, I don't see any reason to continue with that. But since I only watch my subscribed communities, I'm not very exposed to those kinds of people. And I don't care at all if someone disagrees with me or has some mild behavioral issues. I'm used to that (on the internet) and wouldn't block someone just for that.
Hexbear users mostly. About 20 of them harrased me because I said South Park is funny. One guy was even using an alt to insult me on all of my unrelated comments. That was my introduction to Hexbear lol.
Hey be nice to them, that's actually written in chapter 420 of Das Kapital, "Thou shalt save the world by being dicks online"
I would rather block every shitty post or comment I see. So based on post and not person.
Like…. the voting system.
I’m blocking a couple of bots but no actual people.
Though I guess I would block someone if they were being persistently trying to harass me. I can take offensive internet behavior, but not if you’re coming after me as a person.
Dickheads saying Harris isn’t left enough so they’re going to go with the orange fascist instead. Just fuck all the way off with that bullshit.
I don't block them because I enjoy seeing them twist themselves into knots trying to ignore how FPTP works and digging deep holes for themselves when called out. The mental gymnastics are Olympic-level.
“… Harris isn’t left enough so they’re going to go with the orange fascist instead.” The level of political illiteracy needed to create that line of thought is staggering. “ My right-of-centre candidate isn’t as socialist as I’d like so I’ll vote for the candidate who is massively and dangerously further to the right of her.” What the actual fuck? It’s people like that who make me question the value of democracy.
I think it's a mix of trolling and sheer idiocy.
Being a bad actor.
insulting and calling what they are doing ‘a discussion’.
Telling everyone else they suck on a game that requires they participate.
Making rude demands of others in a free for all group that benefits themselves only.
Being on the internet whether it’s on a forum, dating site, YouTube or game is for entertainment. We’re each paying for this entertainment too. So if your idea and my idea do not line up for what qualifies as entertainment then we don’t need to be interacting.
Spam.
And posting nsfw content without tags.
Here I haven't blocked anyone else than people who fall into those two categories for now.
But I'll block anyone posting illegal and vile stuff. I accept other points of view, but only if they keep it legal and, where pertinent, consensual.
I only block one user, because they brought their political topic to unrelated communities, and declared to continue to do so.
Just did not want to keep reading it. The person only has this one topic too, I am not missing out.
Sounds familiar
I try not to block people, but if you prove to me you want nothing but to put me down with shit you made up in your head about me, that's usually what does it. Also tankie assholes or just people who want to gin up an argument where there shouldn't be one.
I have blocked a LOT of communities because I don't want my feed to be half porn and images of weirdly sexualized anime girls who appear to be children. That shit is insanely creepy and besides not enjoying it, I don't want people who glance at my phone to think I'm a pervert.
My blocklist (outside of spam accounts) is like 5-6 people on Lemmy. But it's definitely larger on other social media sites because there are a cesspool of people doing #2 and 3.
WTF where did you even see that
Yeah I don't really see any of this stuff on their list, not even when I used reddit. I mean yes technically I have seen it, but extremely rarely
I should clarify to say I've never been in a space where CP was being distributed.
But one of the times it was on reddit (just before the blackout, actually). One of the "recommended" posts to me was a post with a collection of pictures of random screenshots of naked babies and toddlers in bathing suits from random instagram accounts/family vloggers maybe. It had low double digit upvotes but a hundred comments, the top level ones being just...really creepy, and the replies calling them out (I'm assuming these were people who also got the post "recommended" to them, like me).
I reported it and tried to block it from my memory. It freaked me out how many people were in the post defending it as innocent post of just "kids having fun", when like...it clearly was not. I remember the OP's profile having a bunch of posts like that too, even though it was a very new account.
Anyone reading this , please don't post your babies/toddlers on social media 🙏
What is CSAM? It is an abbreviation for many things apparantly. Are you referring to 'Child sexual abuse material'? Did you encounter such things on Lemmy?
So far I luckily didn't come across anything like that but I also blocked all porn-related instances that I saw so far.
Yep, lemmy was hit with a bunch of CSAM spammers last year, and I was unfortunate enough to see a post before mods/admin were able to do something about it.
https://lemm.ee/post/5814485
If you see the first two things you need to report them, especially the second one. Honestly when it comes to the second one not reporting it is irresponsible. That shit is highly illegal and you need to report that to instance admins so that it can be taken care of ASAP.
Spam isn't as much of a problem but you do need to report it as well, bystander effect is not an excuse either. When it comes to reporting content you need to think about it like you are the only one who ever saw it or the only one who will see it. That's how it is sometimes.
Again if you report before you block that's largely fine. I mainly say this because there are people who block without reporting, and that absolutely is not fine.
I don't. I don't block anyone.
I once blocked someone who gave me unsolicited advice on how to cook a chicken.
I like to put some soy sauce and lemon juice on mine and let them sit for a while after frying
Looks like you're bok bok blocked 😎
It's for the church baby, blocked!
Being annoying (so, hexbear, mostly), and posting dicks. Tbh I'm not even mad at the dickposters, I just don't wanna see it.
Bad faith arguments and hatred of any minority. That covers about 99% of it
Trolling, posting disgusting and horrifying pictures in imageai community (nothing to report, just not what I'm there for), and that one person who keeps making new accounts to complain about their life and be hostile to anyone who tries to offer advice or hope.
I rarely block people. I find it better just to leave Lemmy communities with problematic/annoying users.. lemmy.world communities are the worst in that sense.
e.g. it might be me commenting in a non-political community about something random and then people jumping in and politicizing the thread and/or anything I wrote there. If I wanted to talk politics I'd join a politics sub, dealing with people that turn each and every post into something political gets old fast. And if the community moderators aren't interested in moderating that shit then what's the point sticking around in that community? So rather than block people I just leave those communities entirely & move on.
I haven’t yet blocked anyone.
My opinions are formed by choosing the things that survive the gauntlet of disagreement, so that’s one “reason” down. And I haven’t yet encountered anyone who has any other way of hurting me with words, so I haven’t needed to block anyone.
I guess there’s mentioning poop while I’m eating, but those people tend to be family and I can’t block them.
You can block people? Well that changes things.
Heads up, Lemmy's block system is more like muting. I wouldn't really recommend it's use non-discriminately. This is because blocking simply hides users it doesn't prevent interaction on posts or comments, it doesn't deal with them if they are actually problematic users.
So if you see people being trolls, harassing others, or making bad faith arguments I highly recommend reporting them, as it can be helpful to alert admins and moderators of bad people and take care of them.
I see, so if I don't want to see a users posts and I block them, I won't see them, but everyone else will? I mean in a thread we are both contributing to?
Yup it has no affect on whether other people can see them, and no bearing on their ability to reply. Which is mildly concerning when it comes to harassment and blocking as a defense for harassment.
That seems to be the case for me. My app (connect) won't let me interact with those users but IIRC on web I can (don't take my word though its been a while.)
I tried it and blocked users do not appear in my app or on the web, it totally hides them as if they don't even exist.
I don't on Lemmy because it doesn't really do anything besides hiding their posts. On Mastodon I block people who are AI trolls, political trolls, reactionaries, and in general people who are hostile. People who are objectively horrible people, sometimes it's because I see them doing it, but other times because they lashed out directly at me. Most blocks on Mastodon are preceded by reports to server admins but I still block them because it usually takes time for people to be moderated.
That's what I need it to do. Out of my sight. Doesn't matter if they can still see my posts. I hope they write me a lot of long and nasty messages that I never see.
You don't find it limiting you can only talk to people who fit your understanding of acceptable conversation?
I'm open to talk with anyone. It's only after they demonstrate their uncivility that I block them.
Have you considered though that people are only a certain way for that bit of time. Essentially, they could be rude one day a year, and you got them on that day. Is it worth blocking the rest of it? What's the cutoff?
Oh absolutely. A huge number of the people I've blocked are probably perfectly decent people and I just happened to notice them write that one snide response.
However, I've quite often seen blocked people commenting to me and I've logged out to read the comment and I'd say about 50% of the time it has been a mean comment only proving that I blocked them for a good reason. I also sometimes go thru the modlog and a huge number of the the users I see there I have already blocked.
I agree with your point though. You're right, I just don't care. There's so many people here that when I block someone there's another to take their place. There's just too much to pay attention to.
Thats fair, I'm here for the different perspectives and opinions, so I have noone blocked right now.
Even trolls give honest answers if you ask why enough, its interesting to learn how people think.
I completely agree. It's not an echo chamber I'm trying to build here. I never block anyone only for having a different opinion. Quite the contrary; I actively look for a debate. I just don't want to engage with people who do it in bad faith.
Nah, there is no point interacting with people who are pro Israeli military action. Supportive of Israel sure whatever but the people who are happy that they are actively killing civilians and think it's justified, just aren't people that are worth talking to, discussing, or arguing with. You're never going to be able to make them less shitty, all interacting with them is going to do is make your day worse. So block away, because conversation needs to be a two way street. If it's already one way, may as well not have any traffic on it at all.
This goes for any vitriolic and aggressive people, not just active genocide supporters, they're just usually the ones I end up blocking. Tankies too but since I filtered ml I see way less of that shit.
Well I'd say what you are describing is similar to using a screwdriver to hammer in a nail, and then giving up after the 5th time fails.
Its not the goal thats impossible, its your methods. There are people changing peoples minds out there but they aren't doing it with unwavering arguments and unbeatable logic.
Can I hammer a nail with my forehead? Maybe, if I try enough times. However, it fucking hurts, and there are literally thousands of nails to go. It just is not worth the personal cost.
I guess thats gonna be true until you find a hammer I suppose.
It's not about them seeing my posts it's their ability to interact without my knowledge since different types of harassment can be quite harmful even if you don't see it (i.e. lying, disinformation, accusations). So it's not in my best interest to block people on a platform where the block system treats the threat of these people as non-legitimate by allowing their continued interaction and replies.
I sincerely hope you never meet with any of the more elaborate trolls or bad-faith actors who use more aggressive tactics like accusations or disinformation against you. This can be very harmful, even more so if you cannot see it and respond to or report it, especially reporting it. Also a lack of reporting and substituting reporting for blocking can be harmful in the long run because when users are not reported, they may never be actioned by mods or admins. Which is awful for the health of the community, maybe you think others can report for you but bystander effect is real and the people who think this way eventually compound allowing trolls and bad-faith actors to operate longer if not indefinitely, so it doesn't benefit anyone to hide them and pretend they don't exist.
When I remember that it is Guy that post things that ennoys me, it is Time for a block. It doesn't have to be something I'm angry about if the user is active enough in a space I frenquent but their post doesn't interest me, I block them to clear my view.
I'l lucky to never had to block someone because I got on an internet fight with them.
advertising and ALL CAPS
When a co-worker just endlessly stalks you after staring, and being weird and creepy. I had no mutual friends and she kept showing up as someone I might know.
Beyond the obvious trolls and complete loons, I also block people who never contribute an original comment or post and only reply to other comments in order to "correct" other people or "call them out". Their comment history makes it immediately obvious when they are this type of user.
They strike me as particularly cowardly and obnoxious, because they only want to attack / start something against, and never risk a simple original assertion of their own. Offense being the best defense, etc. They probably think of themselves as verbal judo masters.
IOW, they are basically using Lemmy as fodder for their pedantry. I'm not interested at all in engaging with this type of jackass. Unfortunately there are a lot of them on the internet. My block list is long.
I don't tend to block anyone online unless I feel like they are harassing me. Haven't blocked anyone on Lemmy so far. I think people can be too quick to block others who have different points of view these days.
I block people when I see the porn posts from the same account like every one or two posts in new.
I don't why lemmy.world has so much porn
There was this French guy posting nudes to every bloody community and filters only worked intermittently.
Like nice cock bro but it got old quickly.
I think my blocklist is about 1/3 spam, 1/3 hatespeach, blatent disinformation and promoting genocide, and 1/3 untagged nsfw. Its a couple dozen users right now.
On my old account it was hundreds (almost all hate-speech, disinformation, and promoting genocide), but Hexbear has been defederated and I've givien up and blocked .ml so I don't run into much of that anymore.
Constant harassment or spam bots. I don't care if people disagree with my politics or something. I sometimes forget you can block people.
Everyone here talking about blocking for political reasons and bad behavior while I'm over here blocking because you post unfunny memes.
I blocked several users who post far-left memes because they just sucked and weren't even funny in the slightest, they just wanted to get their point across rather than make a funny memr
Haven't blocked anyone on Lemmy. Block people on Twitter when a raging bigot is put on my For You. Block people on Tumblr when a raging bigot shows up in my notes or if I see someone post a reader insert fic.
I blocked two accounts on my instance that kept posting porn without the NSFW tag, as a troll. From the message it was likely the same person who owned both accounts.
I've only ever blocked one person, a former friend who hurt me very badly. I doubt they'd ever try to contact me again anyway, but I needed to make sure that bridge stays burned.
Never blocked anyone
Only one block due to spam. Even the user name was cheap{goodstype}.
Usually there is no point blocking, you get banned for the stuff I'd block anyway.
Disagreeing with me in a comment.
No, that's not why.
Blocked
They keep debating and polluting my inbox when I said I won't reply anymore.
My block list on here is only that stupid media bias rating bot so far. If this place gets like reddit with a dozen idiotic bots butting into every conversation while adding nothing of value, they'll get blocked as well.
Speaking more generally, I block my abusive ex on everything.
Spam/scam mostly.
I will argue into oblivion and keep someone unblocked
A demonstration that the person is not interested in a conversation, they just want to grandstand and use rhetoric tricks to feel like they are superior and are strictly aiming to used the conversation as a way to inflate their sense of self worth at the cost of treating you like a human being.
"No way I am reading all that" on a average sized post while expounding their opinion in an equally lengthy paragraph is usually the same start of the end. These people are generally not actively trolling they are just up their own ass. If they cannot demonstrate basic intellectual mutual respect after having this pointed out to them blocking them is both for best of us.
A particular pet peeve is people who quote every bit of a post in sections to refute it. It's lazy and I have witnessed it from people in my life who are extremely narcissistic. Writing your own brief is respectful. Essentially writing over someone else's entire post with red pen isn't. It's not a block, but it's a contributing factor
If it's someone using very bad faith rhetoric like moving goalposts or extreme cherrypicking - basically any stuff that demonstrates obvious trolling I don't block, I counterpunch. My goal becomes making sure you do not leave the arguement with what you come there for.
All in all I have blocked about 3 people. I believe in second chances so someone has to show no signs of improvement after about an average of 7 replies.
Being unnecessarily rude, or arguing in bad faith. Got about a dozen people on my block list.
Mostly racism, sexism, bad-faith arguments, and some religious stuff. I often double-check a person's post history to make sure I'm not just reading it wrong. I also do so to make sure I'm not blocking someone for a single bad day or bad take.
I think younger me would have argued more or tried to convince them of things by showing evidence, but I just don't have the time or energy at the moment; I have a full-time job, a small farm, and home maintenance on the (used) house I moved into 6 months ago.
I don't block anyone because I do not like to shove other perspectives out of view and pretend they don't exist. Also I grew up on old internet where having a thick skin was a necessity.
There are other reasons to block people than to hide differing viewpoints.
If you're talking about people who do illegal or objectively terrible things, this is a terrible use case. As Lemmy's block system is really meant only as a feed curation tool. It's for things that you "don't wike and don't wannna to see 👶". So to use it on people who are actually bad actors is not a good idea, and certainly isn't a good idea to encourage its use in that manner. After all if everybody ignores these people and nobody reports them then they are allowed to run wild for much longer if not indefinitely. That's why reporting is encouraged, it helps take care of bad faith users.
I think a lot of people need to get used to the idea that it is partially their responsibility to deal with bad faith users by reporting. On big tech platforms it didn't make much of a difference because they didn't care, instance admins here do care though, and many don't have the legal defenses that those companies have especially when it comes to illegal shit that might be posted by some of these awful depraved individuals. Let them know about it sooner rather than later, report the trolls.
Apologies if I came off as a bit harsh.
Most of the people I've blocked haven't broken any rules. Reporting them would be pointless.
That's fair, most of the people I've dealt with who I thought about blocking usually were, either they were directly harassing or attacking me, were blatantly alt-right trolls attacking other people for their presentation or they were simply being rude and hostile for no reason.
I guess those things might be different on lemm.ee but generally here those things earn people comment or post removal, community bans, and sometimes even site bans (account termination if this is their home server). Same is true for other servers I'm on. Including the Mastodon server I'm a part of.
I probably have way lower criteria for blocking than most other people. I deliberately go to threads about Elon Musk for example and block everyone making snide remarks about him. Not because I'm a fan of Musk but because I'm not interested in dealing with people who use social media to talk shit. The people I have had the most insightful conversations with don't post replies like that. My blocklist is way over 500 users long already and I add several people to it every day. I'm simply just trying to improve the signal to noise ratio.
I understand this, but I think one of the prevailing uses for blocking has sadly become to shove away voices that one wishes not to hear.
Agree with this perspective and this is also why I've not got anyone blocked on here. However it's possible both of us are fortunate enough to have never encountered a stalker or some kind of determined harassment campaign.
I agree with this very much, I don't really have any desire to hide opposing viewpoints either. Which is really the only reason why you would block somebody on Lemmy using its highly crippled blocking system.
On other platforms like Mastodon and Reddit most of the reason why I block people stems around bad behavior, like legitimately objectively harmful behavior. Things that are considered objectionable even by instance admins, and also these platforms allow you to view blocked users and their content after they have been blocked and also submit reports if they continue to behave badly. It's more like a soft moderation tool than a content feed curation tool on those platforms.
When it comes to blocking on Lemmy blocking these types of people is actually a bad idea. These people need to be reported so that they can be dealt with and they don't cause more harm to the community. What they don't need is to be blocked and ignored so that they can continue perpetrating their evil shit without other people getting upset. This is especially true in the case of people who do illegal stuff, that stuff can get the instance in trouble.
People mentioning poly and communism as if its a good thing
poly? like polyamory?
Or styrene?