Agreed on the risk of having baked-in bans, though alternatively, maybe using the already available tool, per-instance defederation would be better. Or also as Lemmy allows, users defederating from instances they’d rather avoid.
Or also as Lemmy allows, users defederating from instances they’d rather avoid.
Lemmy does not do this, the devs implemented an incredibly broken block system that is nothing more than mute. Suspected to be done this way intentionally.
On an instance level, it does not block an instances’ users at all
On a per-user level, blocked users can still fully interact with your comments and posts, you just can’t see it. What’s more damning is that ActivityPubs spec’d block does do a proper block, but dessalines chose to roll their own broken system.
In both cases, it’s akin to this “one-way” federation they bring up.
The only true way to block an instance, is for an instance admin to fully defederate.
That makes sense on a closed forum like Facebook or Instagram where its your own page and you can block people from seeing it, but I don’t know if you should be allowed to post misinformation or spam or snake oil on a public forum and then prevent that public from seeing anything in the comments that might contradict you. The room for abuse outweighs the potential benefits in my view.
The cons are pretty bad imo. It’s common on Reddit now for people to get into an argument, reply and then immediately block to prevent a response and make it look like that person didn’t care to respond. If someone is a poweruser and responsible for a meaningful portion of posts and spawned comment threads in a community, they can use the block function to strategically limit the ability of certain other users to participate, since a blocked person can not only not reply to them but also can’t reply to anyone else further down a thread. This effect is worse in smaller subs, it’s basically soft moderation powers granted just by blocking and writing things that generate engagement. And when this is happening, by its nature it is hard to even tell it’s happening.
Separating the communities from the users makes sense in some contexts, like blocking all of the communities of a NSFW type instance without blocking all their users. But there should be a additional option for users to block all the users of an instance without needing to do each one individually.
Agreed on the risk of having baked-in bans, though alternatively, maybe using the already available tool, per-instance defederation would be better. Or also as Lemmy allows, users defederating from instances they’d rather avoid.
Lemmy does not do this, the devs implemented an incredibly broken block system that is nothing more than mute. Suspected to be done this way intentionally.
On an instance level, it does not block an instances’ users at all
On a per-user level, blocked users can still fully interact with your comments and posts, you just can’t see it. What’s more damning is that ActivityPubs spec’d block does do a proper block, but dessalines chose to roll their own broken system.
In both cases, it’s akin to this “one-way” federation they bring up.
The only true way to block an instance, is for an instance admin to fully defederate.
What’s wrong with that? The alternative is how Reddit lets spam bots and misinformation block the replies calling them out.
While there are certainly some cons, block should mean block. If user A blocks user B, they should not be able to see each other, period
That makes sense on a closed forum like Facebook or Instagram where its your own page and you can block people from seeing it, but I don’t know if you should be allowed to post misinformation or spam or snake oil on a public forum and then prevent that public from seeing anything in the comments that might contradict you. The room for abuse outweighs the potential benefits in my view.
That’s what instance admins and comm mods are for
Anything less than full blocking leaves a much bigger room for harassment.
If a bad faith user has blocked people who might be critical of their misinformation or poor behaviour, there’d be no-one to alert the moderators.
Someone tested the consequences of this type of blocking on Reddit.
Piefed blocking should prevent the blocked person from replying to the blocker.
I tried it a while ago, it was functional on the same instance, I don’t remember between Piefed instance or between Piefed and Lemmy
The cons are pretty bad imo. It’s common on Reddit now for people to get into an argument, reply and then immediately block to prevent a response and make it look like that person didn’t care to respond. If someone is a poweruser and responsible for a meaningful portion of posts and spawned comment threads in a community, they can use the block function to strategically limit the ability of certain other users to participate, since a blocked person can not only not reply to them but also can’t reply to anyone else further down a thread. This effect is worse in smaller subs, it’s basically soft moderation powers granted just by blocking and writing things that generate engagement. And when this is happening, by its nature it is hard to even tell it’s happening.
Separating the communities from the users makes sense in some contexts, like blocking all of the communities of a NSFW type instance without blocking all their users. But there should be a additional option for users to block all the users of an instance without needing to do each one individually.
Removed by mod
I dunno if you were talking about instance block, but a much more functional one has been merged and will ship with Lemmy 1.0.