Seriously what's that idea?
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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.
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the discussion was 2 years old, so I'm a bit fuzzy - it looks like it was only 1 person.
but it was enough to convince me from basically saying what yall are saying here "don't expect privacy on a public site" to "there should be an attempt at privacy, and people facing harassment should have some measure of control to protect themselves"I didnt feel the need to make the provide their credentials as a minority and prove to me that they're being harassed and that muting the harasser wasn't enough. What they said made sense.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Looking at the post you reference the person you talked to is a transgender person who moderates both LGBTQ+ and Transfem in Lemmy.blahaj.zone, they provide more than enough evidence of their minority status, but that wasn't really needed. The question was what group was being harassed and thus this interaction would imply that the LGBTQ community is being harassed on Lemmy.
What I feel like you missed in your previous discussion is that the other person was talking about privacy in the context of being outed in the real world. The harassment being referred to was in the context of your real life identity being revealed or connected to your online conversation.
Under this context they are looking for a feature similar to how Facebook (at least previously) allowed you to pick who could see your post as you were posting it. That way you could individually disallow specific people or groups from seeing them.
This doesn't imply that the issue is that someone is being harassed on Lemmy and thus we need better blocking options. It's really only an issue for someone who wants to dox themselves and still have private conversations, in which case Lemmy and most online forums can't accomplish that natively across all instances/subreddits/groups. The only solution is to have a private instance with vetting and heavy moderation. If you don't dox yourself you can generally avoid the whole issue here.
Based on this I think you're making a different argument than what the block feature is or ever could be.
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Why not, exactly? I think with the way the fediverse works, this would be a needless hassle for them to program this in. IIRC, posts are all separate and are just referring to another post. I think it'll be up to their server on whether or not to honour that block (your server could possibly sever the link on it's frontend, but that won't change that the person linked your post to theirs)
And even if you could, they could still post a screenshot locally or write stuff about you.
or copy-paste your comment (post-url)
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As a point of reference, on Bluesky, it appears that if you're blocked, you cannot see the account that blocked you. Essentially they just disappeared. They've not visible in search either.
So, unless you create another account, they ceased to exist.
Just to be clear, as far as I can tell, this invisibility is mutual as soon as one account blocks the other.
I think this is the best way to do it.
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They shouldn't be able to do that!
When I block someone, I don't want to see their posts anymore. I know they can still comment on my posts, but that's okay, I just don't see their contributions any longer to make me angry.
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The mods can ban you, but anyone can block you and stop you from commenting on threads they are involved in.
Aren't blocks visible on reddit though? It's been a while since I used it, so maybe I forgot. At the very least, it was considered bad form there outside of direct harassment. I think I was only stalked and harassed once though reddit comments and I just called them out on it to end it.
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Aren't blocks visible on reddit though? It's been a while since I used it, so maybe I forgot. At the very least, it was considered bad form there outside of direct harassment. I think I was only stalked and harassed once though reddit comments and I just called them out on it to end it.
Sort of. The posts show as 'Unavailable' and you get an esoteric error if you try to reply to a thread they're involved in. It doesn't say outright that you're blocked though.
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A block should also be able to prevent them from seeing your activity. That would not constitute silencing the blocked individual as they can still go anywhere and talk to/see anyone else on the fediverse, just not you.
If you don't want everyone seeing your activity, don't post it on a public internet system. Blocks can easily be circumvented.
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I see what you mean. Personally I'm gonna side with the folks that need the block functionality as a defense against stalking/harassment though.
The lead eater can ban anyone they want but that doesn't stop others from posting direct challenges to the lead eater's rhetoric elsewhere. I think its better to help those in need than to leave them vulnerable with less than ideal tools to protect themselves.
Apart from real world means, the best defence against stalking/harassment is to stop posting on a public account associated with the identity that's being stalked/harassed. If someone is that horrible to stalk you, they'll be more than capable of circumventing a block.
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A lot of people here never had a stalker and it shows.
I don't think blocking is an effective measure.
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If you're concerned about someone being able to see your activity, no blacklisting-based system --- which is what OP is talking about in terms of "blocking" would be -- on a system without expensive identifiers (which the Threadiverse is not and Reddit is not --- both let you make new accounts at zero cost) will do much of anything. All someone has to do is to just make a new account to monitor your activity. Or, hell, Reddit and a ton of Threadiverse instances provide anonymous access. Not to mention that on the Threadiverse, anyone who sets up an instance can see all the data being exchanged anyway.
In practice, if your concern is your activity being monitored, then you're going to have to use a whitelisting-based system. Like, the Fediverse would need to have something like invite-only communities, and the whole protocol would have to be changed in a major way.
You can choose to federate with a specific server. I believe some mastodon servers would honour requests to only share with specific accounts, but that's it.
You could possibly have some encryption key shenanigans go on at the client side and build it ontop of the fediverse. It might be possible.
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The way Reddit does is abusive.
Yes, but counterpoint: it was also petty and satisfying as fuuuuck hammering someone with your last point and then blocking them so that after they write up their long-ass reply outlining why eugenics is the true path to a glorious white future, they end up getting an error message.
Yah, it was very bad for actual discourse, but that ship has sailed. people don't care about debate and discourse anymore, on almost every social media site people post things as stand-alone displays to viewers for points, never engaging with each other unless there's a contentious point that can be leveraged for up-arrows and thumbs.
We have to get back to talking to each other in real life and stop pretending having introversion or social anxiety is anything but an obstacle to community and a better world
Nah bro, let them have their schizo rant lol
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I don't think blocking is an effective measure.
Precisely because blocking here doesn't do anything really. On a different platform the feature made me invisible to the person and it helped reduce their obsession with me massively. Out of sight out of mind is true for a lot of people.
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lol ah the classic crybaby wannabe-fascist "paradox of tolerance" garbage. Just admit it, you can't handle people who have different beliefs and opinions to your own because you can't defend your own with any intelligence.
Classic leftist.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Ah, the actual fascist "nobody deserves to be safe" garbage. Just adjust it, you want to use your own personal freedoms as a cludge to undermine the rights of others.
Classic libertarian
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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.
I'm sorry for the way I spoke
We're missing the point here though. People are dragging op through shit for wanting a totally reasonable thing to want.
Maybe Lemmy isn't going to provide it, but they don't deserve to be treated like this for just bringing up something that is pretty clearly confusing to people who dgaf about the underlying protocols
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yes, we all want some censorship.
Speak for yourself.
defederation is censorship.
instance bans are censorship.
community bans are censorship.\
And I disagree with them.
is your position that none of those should be allowed?
My position is that it should all be up to the user. Let me block instances and communities if I don't want to see them. Let me choose what content I want to see. I don't need some mods deciding what is and isn't acceptable based on their ideologies and beliefs, because as we all know and see every day, most abuse that power almost all the time.
if so, thats a wild position to take, but you should say it with your full chest at least.
It's not wild at all, and I have never tried to hide it. I've said it openly many, many times on Lemmy. I think all censorship is bad. Only weak minded people want or need censorship.
Nice attempted "gotcha" though.
But that's the right off the mod and the admin to express themselves through blocking and defederation. It sounds like you're supporting compelled speech
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Ok, so you've chosen 'we are both going to agree that perfect would be better than not perfect'.
For what it's worth, I'm not downvoting you.
But I will be blunt: I don't think you are capable of describing a coherent, implementable version of what you want.
What is your proposal for what, precisely, should be changed?
How are you, or ... apparently you would be asking other people to do this ... how is this change going to be compatible with lemmy as it currently exists, such that every instance could easily adopt it as an update... or... some instances could adopt it as a compatible sort of 'add-on' or 'plugin'?
Who is going to implement that change, or, how is that change going to come about?
Seeing that you don't appear to be willing to code this yourself... how are you going to convince someone else to do this?
What I am saying is 'OP actually does want an unreasonable thing, not from the standpoint of an end user of software who is.concerned about their safety in the abstract, but from the standpoint of being able to outline something that might actually work and also ever be designed.'
What they are asking for is more or less an entirely fundamentally different system than lemmy. They are asking for an entirely new kind of software that works from a fundamentally different paradigm.
Its more like uh, outlining that cars could be safer, and they think they are asking for airbags to be installed, but what they are actually asking for is someone to design a public transportation system.
Thats about the scale and scope of how mechanisticly different what they are asking for is, from how things curfently work... even though, to them, its just a 'way of how they get from point a to point b', and thus seems trivial to them.
The implementation serves the application, not the other way around.
Lemmy would still be Lemmy, if overnight all insurances miraculously switched to a different protocol that provides the same functionality.
To say that it's too difficult to implement is fair. I'd argue that this being so difficult would indicate a fundamental design flaw, rather than a user making an unreasonable request. Maybe a flaw was part of an intentional tradeoff, but that doesn't make it less of a flaw.
An I going to personally redesign activitypub? No.
I tried to read the spec and i disliked it enough to stop before I got very far into it. But although I dislike the spec, I like the apps people built on it. For the most part.
And I strongly disagree with the sentiment that feedback is only useful if it provides solutions. I dont think that it is bad for OP to point out that this is confusing and seemingly punitive to the blocker, even without offering to fix it themselves. -
The paradox of tolerance doesn't mean what you think it means.
The "paradox" is fully resolved if you have strong guarantees for the tolerance you care about: fundamental freedoms and equality, and punishments for those who attempt to subvert them. So you don't "tolerate" people who are in the process of dismantling that tolerance by advocating for or engaging directly in harassment of trans people (for example) but you also don't punish people who, for example, are opposed to trans women participating in womens' sports - because while equal participation ought to be a guaranteed matter of equality, we've also broadly agreed as a society that sports ought to be split, and the precise nature of that split is not a guaranteed matter of equality.
Applying this to Lemmy, there is no risk to tolerance in allowing a discussion about sex, gender and sports. There is a risk to tolerance in allowing a "discussion" in which trans people are generally disparaged on the basis of their transition, because it can lead to actions which go beyond mere speech.
To look at this another way, rather than linking a wikipedia page with a dumb insult and saying "try learning something", you'd be better off identifying the behaviour you don't want to see, what action you want to take about it, and why it's justified based on the consequences of not taking that action. "Tolerance" and "intolerance" are vague terms, so have a more productive discussion by being precise.
The "you care about" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
And while you're right, the guy is just a edgelord. Providing him with a nuanced and detailed take wasn't going to do anything.
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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.
To use a bit of hyperbole and a physical metaphor:
I can let them burn my effigy in my front yard, or I can force them to go burn it in their own neighborhood.
They're still burning the effigy and littering, but at least it's not outside my front door, scaring away all the people who come to visit me. -
If you can't see the replies how can you possibly be harassed by it?
Because they can spread lies about me that I can't see, to people who come to engage with me.
Not everyone is a stranger, you can have communities for real world groups.
