Today I found out that on this platform, “block” is just a fancy word for “filter”. Just had an individual user go through my entire profile and downvote everything. So I blocked them, thinking that this would make me safe from any future stalking. But I was just informed that no, any user that you ‘block’ is actually still able to see everything that you post and vote freely.
All that ‘blocking’ actually does is hide the person from you. But they’re still free to stalk and do as they please. I just tested this out for myself using my other account and sure enough, it’s true.
I just want to know, how is this acceptable? I bet you that if I called out this user publically, I would probably end up in hot water myself for harassment or something. And yet ‘blocking’ is completely fkn useless too. So what recourse does a user actually have here when faced with a hostile user that wants to ruin their experience on Lemmy?
Coming from Blåhaj, I thought I would try ‘moderating’ my own experience for a bit. But you can’t ‘moderate’ your own experience if the tools to do so are fkn useless and only trick you into thinking that something has been achieved, without actually doing anything useful.
And now I’m starting to see a new value in instances like Blåhaj. Because you actually need admins that give a shit around here or else you’re just left to the wolves on a platform that seems more interested in protecting abusive users than allowing users to protect themselves.
Edit: watching you all upvote the person talking shit about how this works on other platforms while downvoting the actual correct information that comes with a source has certainly taught me a thing or two about this platform and the people on it. You all actually prefer misinformation to fact as long as it suits your vibe or opinion more. Like a bunch of fkn MAGAs. I really wish there was a way to disable notifications for this post (another feature missing here) because watching you people upvote misinformation is enough to make me no longer give a flying fuck what anyone here says or thinks.
I want to know when and why younger people seem to think that blocking inherently works both ways. It’s almost never worked like that. If you block someone, you are hiding them from your sight; not hiding yourself from theirs. This is the most common way blocking works, with very few sites working the way OP thinks it should.
I’m touched that you think mid-50s is young, but bi-directional blocking is, and should be, the universal norm. Social media blocks are inherently about preventing harassment. If they don’t go both ways then they aren’t blocking anything. Hiding/ignoring content and blocking a user are two completely different concepts.
at best blocking should prevent interaction, “hiding” information that is publicly available is pointless.
Can you give examples of platforms where it works like this? I know that blocking someone on Facebook blocks them from being able to see you. Pretty Twitter is or was the same before Musk. And I just looked it up, blocking a user on Reddit does in fact block them from seeing you. I’m pretty sure it’s always worked this way on smaller platforms I’ve used too.
So I’m curious to know, which platforms have you always used that have apparently always worked this way?
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So, 20 years ago before Facebook? I know for a fact that blocking has always worked properly on Facebook, I had a very toxic ‘friendship’ there another lifetime ago where we were blocking and unblocking each other every 5 minutes. But it’s funny how everyone here keeps upvoting the incorrect information and ignoring the correct information about this. Not funny haha but funny peculiar. If Facebook only filtered out people instead of blocking them properly, it would be a disaster as far as stalking goes. And I think that everyone knows it because normally people on this platform seem quite rational. Except for when there’s any criticism of the Fediverse, that is.
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With admins, mods (not relevant for default UI?) actively dealing with mass downvotes, stalker-like behaviour and so on.
See that’s my problem here. I just came from a heavily moderated instance because I thought that I could moderate my own experience instead. But it turns out that I have to rely on admins and moderators anyway.
Part of the adoption of the dual-side block method is because large corps want automation and don’t really care about quality (all about engagement).
Yeah I don’t buy this. To me, it makes perfect logical sense that if I block someone, they’re actually blocked and not just hidden from my view. Maybe this wasn’t a problem for forum sites used by a couple of hundred people at most but it’s not 1999 anymore and there’s a lot of psychos out there. It’s nice to know that you can actually protect yourself to some extent on an online platform these days.
As I said, I see where you are coming from and you do have a point.
I am just trying to explain the reasoning behind the opposing arguement. It’s not just being old school for the sake of being old school.
The forums of old weren’t not just a few hundred users. Some of the bigger ones had DAUs in the tens of thousands.
Literally every forum, chatroom, and social media site outside of TikTok, and I think Imgur, works the same way it does here. Including Facebook and Reddit. The only thing Reddit does special in this, is that blocked users engagement doesn’t appear to you either. So if you block user ABC, they will still see your posts, but if they vote on it, you won’t see that vote.
When you block someone, the first thing that Facebook does is restrict the blocked user’s access to your profile. The user can’t view your profile even if they have a direct link to your account page. They’ll get an error message if they try to do that.
Information from https://www.howtogeek.com/896008/what-happens-when-you-block-someone-on-facebook/
You can keep making these bullshit statements about how it works on other sites but thankfully I have this thing called ‘internet’ to look up the facts myself.
I’m not sure how or why it hasn’t been mentioned yet, but one reason blocking is the way it is, is because in a public forum like this, blocking somebody else from seeing your content is extremely open to abuse, while providing no real benefit from a protection perspective. As accounts are essentially free and unlimited, any malicious user can logout or spin up a new account to bypass your block.
On the abuse issue, it was previously shown with some testing on Reddit that by posting something offensive and controversial, then blocking everybody who responded in a negative manner, you could within 3 - 5 rounds of blocking reach the point where you could post practically anything and have it seen like a popular opinion, since everybody who disagreed with you and was willing to call out your bullshit couldn’t see it any more. Hence technical reasons aside, there are very good systemic reasons the blocking mechanism works the way it does.
This made me realize a similar effect works on whole communities. People block a community, that makes the content of said community seem more popular than it is.
Yeah, it’s one of the factors causing echo chambers to form online.
Oh you were new to even reddit. The thing you want is something that was only added there a few years ago. Before it worked the exact same way as it does here.
Sorry, we just expect you to be an adult and not care about the numbers. That’s why there isn’t a count on your page. Do you know how often I have people follow me around in my comments to downvote me? A lot. Know what I do? Nothing because I’m over 30.
40 here. Pretty much what I was thinking.
The way you behave in public is visible by the public, kids. No matter how you feel about it. If you don’t want it read, don’t post it.
Ah if only I could be tough and brave and cool like you.
Exactly. You just have to try harder to be a better person, that’s all
I’m not sure how long you’ve been here - not assuming how long you’ve been lurking, or that this is your first account, but I think it really is easier not to care here. All kidding aside, try it. You don’t have this whole upvote/award dopamine cycle here, and in many cases, anyone can see the number of downvotes a comment has vs upvotes - something that reddit long ago “fuzzed” along with actual vote counts.
For instance, the comment I’m replying to has 3 upvotes (one of them mine), and 1 downvote as of right now. This ratio may stay the same, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you got more downvotes, because your comment was a kind of dismissive reply to a comment that probably represents what a lot of folks who’ve been here a while feel, which also came from a user that is very active and generally well liked. I could not begin to tell you their upvote count (can’t even see my own) as a proof of their popularity, so I just have to go by what I observe in my day to day, and this place is still small enough that you see familiar usernames in a variety of communities.
This is still kind of a small town, and you may come to see this bug as a feature in time. I did.
This is an obscure forum with fake internet points 🙄
While that is true. It can still bury or hide valuable discussion. Not that this advocates for bidirectional blocking. But it would be nice if there were some method or mechanism to look for people doing such behaviors and weight their inputs less.
I’ve seen banal and innocuous comments from myself and whole chains including others get down voted for no real apparent reason. Personally I see that and I choose to smile. Knowing that that person is so seething and ineffectual that that is the best they can figure out to do. But not everyone sees it that way. It’s definitely something that will have to be tackled at some point if the system is going to grow. Because whether or not you agree that it’s manageable now. It certainly won’t be if there is a huge growth spurt.
Ah there it is. The “it’S oNlY imAGiNAry iNteRneT pOInts” smart ass comment. I knew it was coming, glad it’s out the way.
Good one 🤣🤣😂🤣
You use “stalk” for “see what you publicly publicized”. You block people to not be annoyed, not to be safe. Consider that AN UNLOGGED, ANONYMOUS user can also see your posts. How is blocking supposed to work in this case?
I guess the answer would be that an unlogged user can’t vote.
But the points didn’t matter on Reddit and they’re even less of a consideration on Lemmy.
an unlogged user can’t vote.
But an unlogged user can create a new account, no problem.
I mean, okay.
If I already said something publicly, I expect it to be read publicly.
The block tool is because I’m tired of dealing with their bullshit, not because I’m afraid of them reading what I’ve posted.
Still nice to know though, I guess.
I think the utility of blocking people on a public platform is kind of fake anyway. If someone is harassing you, and you block them, it’s obvious that you did it so they’ll just log out and suddenly they can see your posts again. Accounts are trivial to make on the fediverse too so they can always just spin up a new one to harass you.
I think silent filtering is better for that reason because they can’t tell that you did it so they won’t just immediately switch to a new account and keep going.
Active blocking like you’re talking about only makes sense if there’s such a thing as “follower-only” posts imo. Otherwise it’s a false sense of security because they can see everything anyway just by logging out or switching to another account.
I understand your frustration and I, too, thought that blocking went both ways before seeing your post.
If you encounter someone who is harassing you and attacking your reputation without your knowledge and down voting your whole history, you should gather the proof and contact your instances mods. There’s a very good chance they’ll ban them either temporarily or permanently from the instance. Or contact the mods from their instance as well.
Anyway, I hope this helps.
Be that as it may, I love seeing a reply to one of my posts from someone I’ve blocked.
Lets me know that whatever bullshit they wrote is going to go eternally unanswered, and I hope it frustrates them.
That is how blocking works on most platforms.
Piefed seems to implement bidirectional blocking
✅ blocking – users, communities, domains, instances. bi-directional.
https://join.piefed.social/roadmap/
@rimu@piefed.social @Snoopy@piefed.social @fxomt@piefed.social
Yeah I’m honestly just waiting for a decent app before I jump over to Piefed. Everything I see about that place excites me because every time they drop a changelog, it’s chock full of great things that improve the end user’s experience. It’s the future of this platform IMO.
Lots of people are waiting for app support, fingers crossed 🤞
So, there’s a inherent problem with blocking working both ways on a forum style site or platform like Lemmy.
When you block someone and the block goes through, if it works both ways, that means your comments or exchanges with that person disappear. The problem with that? They disappear for you and the person you blocked. Anyone else who comments can see the thread. But you both no longer can. So say someone comes along and responds to you on that thread. Or to the other person on that thread? Will their comment go through? Will you be able to see their comment? Will you be able to reply to their comment?
It becomes more complicated and further can affect users not related to or involve with the block depending on how it’s handled and for the most part that’s problematic.
I think we should be differentiating a “block function” (and neither the twain shall meet) from a “mute function” (a one way filter).
I feel like this might genuinely just be better than giving people a false understanding of what the filter they are using does.
I never heard of redit. Is that like ribbit? Or some new fangled app or something?
