Seriously what's that idea?
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I get the feeling that some of those blocking people can't suppress the urge to check what others are commenting to them, defeating the point of the block lol
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oh thats rich.
let me quote to you every reply you've given me so far in this thread. this will be a good laugh.They would be, though. That’s exactly what they’re saying could happen - you just wouldn’t be able to see it. In effect, what they described is exactly what you’re claiming to be a problem, except worse because it’s exclusively in control of the harasser.
how would preventing the harasser from commenting on my posts give the harasser more control than letting them comment on my post?
How? One new account that blocks the victim and it’s exactly what you’re arguing against, except now the user doesn’t get the choice to ignore it or fight back. It’s completely invisible to them.
With how it works here, it’s the victim’s choice to endure it or isolate themselves from it. Do you not see how that’s better?
You still haven't explained how control is being handed to the harasser. In fact, you said the victim is getting blocked, so I'm not clear who you even consider to be the victim here. And in fact, it doesn't need to be invisible to them.
You’re hinging on the wrong part. The only difference between the scenarios laid out is who has the choice. In the one you are arguing for, the choice is in the hands of the harasser.
again, you haven't explained how control is being handed to the harasser
I have. Multiple times.
no, you have not.
and that is every reply that I can find that you sent to me.
but meanwhile I actually went into detail about who would be able to do what, and what that would mean for both parties.
so... thats pretty embarrassing for you.
I know it can be difficult to keep things straight with so many threads going on, but have a bit of humility.Yup, that's what I said.
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I've blocked a bunch of people, who may be replying to me with harassing comments, but that isn't influencing what I do. It might influence the overall conversation, and that could be a problem, but I think the way that problem is dealt with should be public, because the problem is public, it's not something that's exclusively my problem. I don't think I should have the authority to act to police any arbitrary community like that, especially without anyone being able to know that I'm doing it.
wrote last edited by [email protected]yea it usually ends with the troll commenting"for your information it spelled like this or its discussed this way" followed with insulting comment" go back and learn how to do this or that before commmenting" i immediately block grammar nazis too.
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then make the block community-specific.
thats finenobody said it had to be fediverse-wide.
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Hypothetically I wonder if it would be possible for Lemmy to federate some kind of hashed version of your private blocklist, such that no one could decode the accounts it references, but at post-time a username could be checked against the list and blocked from replying?
That's not quite sufficient. Look at a bit more advanced cryptographic stuff like Snarkblock.
You still got the issue that blocks WILL have a publicly visible effect when you block somebody who already have replied to you.
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They shouldn't be able to do that!
Bluesky differentiates between blocking and muting. Bluesky blocking is like what you describe, which is also how Reddit blocking works. Bluesky muting is like Lemmy blocking, where they can engage on your posts, you just won't see it.
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If I block someone, and one of their posts or comments gets reported for moderation, it won't allow the moderation tools to work. I have to un-block them to moderate them.
This is why moderators should use a separate account for moderation actions than their main
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More 1st amendment (not that I am american). I think I made it clear that what you propose will do more harm and that what I am protecting is the ability for everyone to post on a public site based on the idea that it is what it was built for. I don't think that lemmy has no harassment, but reporting and having much more private communities ran by members of that community is a better choice then giving every single person (the harassers included) the ability to police what is typed everywhere.
let me combine what you just said with something from that other 2yo conversation with something someone else just made me think of:
What if blocking just prevented replying/voting, and didn't actually prevent the blockee from seeing the content? The crux of the issue with the reddit-style block is that people could pre-emptively block people and then say shit about them without them ever knowing. So let them know, just don't let them respond back directly on the other person's post.
additionally, what if the block was community-specific so that this wasn't something that needed to be federated everywhere, making blocks public, and impacting behaviour across the entire fediverse? If someone wanted a wider block, then a client would be able to send out multiple blocks to different communities. or maybe instance-level instead of community-level.
and finally, what if we had invite-only/private communities? afaict this isn't supported in lemmy, and there is no way to make it totally private, but we can make a best effort so that its not trivial for harassers to invade these communities and exfiltrate the info. instances/server-software/clients that didn't respect the privacy could be blocked by instances.
I think that together these are pretty reasonable and would satisfy OP.
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and that was nearly the exact argument that I had 2 years ago.
I think that public forums still need a reasonable ability to counter harassment at the individual level, and not every single thing needs to be sent up to a mod.
preventing a single user from interacting with another single user's content is almost the exact opposite of drastic, it is nearly the least impactful action you can take that is actually an action. it doesn't stop the blocked person from interacting with the rest of the community, or even necessarily seeing the blocker's content.sending things to mods can take a while, and mods may not actually be able to identify harassment with enough confidence to ban someone.
like if i say "you live at 221B Baker Street, London", we know that is Sherlock Holmes' address and I'm clearly not doxxing you, but what if the joke wasn't so obvious and I got reported? What if the insult was a dogwhistle that the mod didnt know about? dogwhistles, by their nature, are designed specifically to provide the kind of plausible deniability that would satisfy a mod.
give the victim a low impact tool that they can use to mitigate the harassment a bit. And to be clear, I don't consider "closing your eyes" to be a sufficient mitigation.give the victim a low impact tool that they can use to mitigate the harassment a bit.
It is nether low impact or given to just the victims. The concept you have proposed has also been used to build echo chambers of extreme right wing ideologies, used to cancel discourse and bully any descension to an idea, and most of all used to bully minorities by simply asking loaded questions with ultimatums then blocking the person. What you are advocating for flies in the very face of what lemmy is trying to do, and you are so confident that this will help victims you are willing to "close your eyes" to anything other then a standing ovation in response to your half baked idea.
We have the tools to deal with harassment (and they can always be improved), you seem to think unfettered censorship is needed to fix an issue you seem to have little knowledge or experience of. You could gain some insight by just volunteering to do some mod work, but you are unwilling to do so, yet still think you can speak with any authority on the subject. It is laughable and pure arrogance to think that copying something that has killed the spark/drive of other platforms is a good idea.
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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.
I think that the important thing to keep in mind is that not every lemmy community is a community of strangers. some lemmy communities can overlap significantly with IRL communities, like sports teams, neighborhoods, and classes. Many people in these lemmy communities may know eachother, even if the mods dont know them.
I dont have specific examples of this, since im an old fart and not a school kid with a bunch of extracurricular activities, but are the kinds of cases I'm worried about.in these kinds of examples, the harassment may be both especially potent and especially subtle, because they'll be using dog whistles and inside jokes, so it may not be something a mod is equipped to handle. Ideally parents would get involved (in the case of schoolkids), but we know that doesn't always happen.
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let me combine what you just said with something from that other 2yo conversation with something someone else just made me think of:
What if blocking just prevented replying/voting, and didn't actually prevent the blockee from seeing the content? The crux of the issue with the reddit-style block is that people could pre-emptively block people and then say shit about them without them ever knowing. So let them know, just don't let them respond back directly on the other person's post.
additionally, what if the block was community-specific so that this wasn't something that needed to be federated everywhere, making blocks public, and impacting behaviour across the entire fediverse? If someone wanted a wider block, then a client would be able to send out multiple blocks to different communities. or maybe instance-level instead of community-level.
and finally, what if we had invite-only/private communities? afaict this isn't supported in lemmy, and there is no way to make it totally private, but we can make a best effort so that its not trivial for harassers to invade these communities and exfiltrate the info. instances/server-software/clients that didn't respect the privacy could be blocked by instances.
I think that together these are pretty reasonable and would satisfy OP.
and finally, what if we had invite-only/private communities?
We do have those, you can have instances not federate and be invite only. But lets face it discord does that better.
I think that together these are pretty reasonable and would satisfy OP.
None of those are reasonable and most break the very core concept of federation. What you are proposing is to burn down the fediverse in order to protect groups who are not asking for this.
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i didnt just say that someone else told me its bad, i explained it to you.
and also reddit-style blocking isn't the only way to satisfy what OP (and I) want. its just the clearest example.
the reddit style blocking is a problem because malicious party can pre-emptively block people they're going to shit talk and then the subject of the shit-talking wont know about it. but you can still block interaction without blocking the visibility.you can block a harasser from posting harassment on the victim's content without the reddit problems.
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Yup, that's what I said.
I feel like I'm speaking to Patrick Star.
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I have no issue with this whatsoever. I block people so that I don't need to see their posts, not that they couldn't see mine. If you don't want others reading what you post online, then don't post online.
This sounds like the words of an abuser.
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give the victim a low impact tool that they can use to mitigate the harassment a bit.
It is nether low impact or given to just the victims. The concept you have proposed has also been used to build echo chambers of extreme right wing ideologies, used to cancel discourse and bully any descension to an idea, and most of all used to bully minorities by simply asking loaded questions with ultimatums then blocking the person. What you are advocating for flies in the very face of what lemmy is trying to do, and you are so confident that this will help victims you are willing to "close your eyes" to anything other then a standing ovation in response to your half baked idea.
We have the tools to deal with harassment (and they can always be improved), you seem to think unfettered censorship is needed to fix an issue you seem to have little knowledge or experience of. You could gain some insight by just volunteering to do some mod work, but you are unwilling to do so, yet still think you can speak with any authority on the subject. It is laughable and pure arrogance to think that copying something that has killed the spark/drive of other platforms is a good idea.
This assumes I'm married to having a block that is exactly like reddit, which I'm not. I just replied to you in another thread with a suggestion that more or less accounts for all of these concerns.
It cant account for "simply asking loaded questions with ultimatums then blocking the person" but that seems like it'd only be a problem in communities where the mods were already in on it, right? Otherwise these people would just be banned by the mods for clearly bullying. If mods are able to do their jobs, as you say they are, anyways. would mods not be able to handle this?you have repeatedly explicitly stated how unqualified I am to be a mod, and here you are telling me to be a mod.
You sound like you want to be a mod but the worst kind of biased one.
They want the ability to police others just due to them conversing with them.
you don’t want the responsibility, just a bit of the power.why are you telling me to be a mod then?
you think that I'll make a bunch of people miserable, that will teach me some kind of lesson? if not, then what?
were the admins of lemm.ee lying about it all? were the old reddit mods lying about it before the mod purge?
i dont get what your goal with telling me to mod something. -
Why not start your own TV discussion threads with blackjack and hookers?
Evento better, with blahaj and hookers.*
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but the argument that I'm seeing is "its bad to even try to hinder it"
I know that the fediverse creates technical difficulties regarding privacy, but we can't even make a best effort so its not trivial for harassers?
All credit to you for advocating for needs of marginalized groups for protected spaces to communicate, but the fediverse simply isn't the right tool for that. It's entire philosophy, design and implementation is centered around making everything public, from posts and comments to votes and moderation actions.
Asking the fediverse, or the activitypub protocol to allow blocking a user from responding at all is rather like asking a car to be a bike. It's just not what it is. I can't really concieve any way of making a decentralized public forum work like that as there is no central point that can control permissions. It might be possible to design a system where communities can control membership and posting priviledges, but even then, if it's distributed, it would take very little for a hostile instance to simply ignore any central control and display its users posts locally, leading to the same effect as if you just mute them, leaving them visible to others, albiet only on their instance or others that cooperate with it.
I think that those who are in need of a controlled system should probably be looking at a centralized system that is run and controlled by someone, or a group, that they trust. That would give them the best chance to keep discussions private, and access to read or post controlled. Read access would need to be controlled too, or their discussions can just be mirrored to a hostile server and harassment can occur there where the poster is unaware, just as if they'd muted them.
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I'm not totally sure about the chronology, but I think that the "old->new" block change on Reddit may have been due to calls from Twitter users. Most of the people I saw back on Reddit complaining about the old behavior prior to the change were saying "on Twitter, blocked users can't respond".
On Reddit, the site is basically split up into a series of forums, subreddits. On the Threadiverse, same idea, but the term is communities. And that's the basic unit of moderation --- that is, people set up a set of rules for how what is permitted on a given community, and most restrictions arise from that. There are Reddit sitewide restrictions (and here, instancewide), but those don't usually play a huge role compared to the community-level things.
So, on Twitter --- and I've never made a Twitter account, and don't spend much time using it, but I believe I've got a reasonable handle on how it works --- there's no concept of a topic-specific forum. The entire site is user-centric. Comments don't live in forums talking about a topic; they only are associated with the text in them and with the parent comment. So if you're on Twitter, there has to be some level of content moderation unless you want to only have sitewide restrictions. On Twitter, having a user be able to act as "moderator" for responses makes a lot more sense than on Reddit, because Twitter lacks an analog to subreddit moderators.
So Twitter users, who were accustomed to having a "block" feature, naturally found Reddit's "block" feature, which did something different from what they were used to, to be confusing. They click "block", and what it actually does is not what they expect --- and worse, at a surface glance, the behavior is the same. They think that they're acting as a moderator, but they're just controlling visibility of comments to themselves. Then they have an unpleasant surprise when they realize that what they've been doing isn't what they think that they've been doing.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yeah, looking through a Twitter's user lens I can see why they're confused. What on Reddit was a block, on Twitter would be a Mute. Maybe they should call it that.
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This assumes I'm married to having a block that is exactly like reddit, which I'm not. I just replied to you in another thread with a suggestion that more or less accounts for all of these concerns.
It cant account for "simply asking loaded questions with ultimatums then blocking the person" but that seems like it'd only be a problem in communities where the mods were already in on it, right? Otherwise these people would just be banned by the mods for clearly bullying. If mods are able to do their jobs, as you say they are, anyways. would mods not be able to handle this?you have repeatedly explicitly stated how unqualified I am to be a mod, and here you are telling me to be a mod.
You sound like you want to be a mod but the worst kind of biased one.
They want the ability to police others just due to them conversing with them.
you don’t want the responsibility, just a bit of the power.why are you telling me to be a mod then?
you think that I'll make a bunch of people miserable, that will teach me some kind of lesson? if not, then what?
were the admins of lemm.ee lying about it all? were the old reddit mods lying about it before the mod purge?
i dont get what your goal with telling me to mod something.why are you telling me to be a mod then?
Because that is how people learn.
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This sounds like the words of an abuser.
That’s just an unhinged thing to say.
