They shouldn't be able to do that!
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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Oh great, this again.
Wtf does that even mean?
Ok, lets walk though this. You have spoke with people from marginalized communities that get regularly harassed, correct?
Then please explain it to us the way it was explained to you. After all it convinced you about the value in speech control, a very high bar for most rational people to overcome.
But here is the thing, you have not. You have just stated over and over that this is a needed feature to "protect" marginalized groups. You have not even hinted at the group (hell it could be that its some hexbear talking point or that there is no group at all). And no, naming a marginalized group who sees regular harassment is not an issue, unless the group in question's very existence is offensive. Although there are a lot of nuances between what is and is not offensive, there are still some clear lines (think about say furries being ok vs the man boy love association being not ok).
Also criticism is not harassment, if you feel you are being harassed then use the report button. But don't get upset if not everyone else agrees with you.
*crickets chirping*
My mind is going in overdrive thinking of the possibilities on this. This is like the argument equivalent of trying to pay with an IOU. "I have the best reasons, but you don't know them as they live in another country" sort of stuff.
I am thinking there are a few possibilities (please add if you can, this is fun):
oh hey, fuck you 👍
here is part of the conversation I had where I was convinced. Forgive me for not remembering all of the specifics, it was 2 years ago, and I failed to ask for the credentials as a minority. It took me a while to search it up.
the conversation wasn't just about blocking, it was about how private social networks should be. I was saying that they should be default public, and users should have no expectation of privacy, and then this person explained how problematic that is for people who get persecuted, and why simply muting problematic people isn't sufficient.
The whole conversation is branching IIRC so just walking up the context one comment at a time might not give the full story.
can I explain it like they did? no. I'm not a minority, and this conversation was fucking 2 years ago. I've explained it the best i could, but since you think I'm lying or (god forbid) engaging in a post on hexbear, then you can go and fucking read the conversation for yourself. If you're not happy with their explanation, feel free to necro the post, but it was enough to convince me that just saying "shit is public and you can't expect to be able to prevent people from interacting with your content" isn't sufficient.
Ah thanks for sharing the source!
Really that is helpful.
so as ada (the person you are claiming has shown you the light) said:
In fact reading this I don't think ada (we could just ask them) would take the same position as you on this. They are talking about overall systems and that public systems are not safe for people who have to hide their identity (I don't 100% agree but do see the point). I would not try to put words into their mouth, and I would not use a conversation from 2 years ago in vague memory to argue a point.
Actually lets ask them @Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone , discourse is healthy after all and like most users on this platform they likely have something of substance to say.
that is fair. I shouldn't be putting words in their mouth. I don't think I was. I think i was being pretty clear that this is my current opinion after talking to ada, where I used to have similar beliefs to the majority here (public is public, dont expect privacy) and they convinced me that thats not a reasonable position to take if you value the safety of persecuted minorities (although I have to admit idk if that was what they were hoping I'd take away from that conversation).
Presumably they can do a much better job of explaining the concerns than I can. I have no idea how/if their views have changed since then, or how they apply specifically to blocking.
but my opinion, after talking with them, is that its not a reasonable position to take that public is public, so there should be no expectation of privacy. To me the idea that blocking people only hides their content from you is an extension of that. this comment will maybe give you a better impression of what I got out of that conversation
See, At least this is a reasonable argument. I don't agree with it, and think you are conflating the need for private spaces and the existence of public ones.
The root of our impasse is that you think every public place needs to have drastic tools to protect people in the hands of all users, regardless of what that does to a platform.
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.
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.
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.
Because that is how people learn.
and what lesson are you hoping that I'll learn from being a mod?
that being a mod is actually easy therefore i shouldn't be concerned with mods being too overworked or not up-to-date on dogwhistles? because that was my concern about mods. it seems really strange that you'd want me to learn that lesson, I'm not sure that thatd help you, your argument, or any lemmy communities.