this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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They shouldn't be able to do that!

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[–] Perspectivist@feddit.uk 7 points 22 minutes ago (1 children)

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.

[–] bss03@infosec.pub 2 points 11 minutes ago

Also, while other location in the Fediverse might disable access to unauthenticated persons, comments and post in Lemmy are generally public in that way. So, a blocked user could simply logout (or visit from a different instance) to see the content.


Also, as a third-party I do want someone (e.g. a fact checker) to be able reply to a comment with more information, so that I can see it, even if the commenter doesn't want to see replies (from the "woke mob" or wikipedians, e.g.).

I understand some people think the reply thread under their comments is somehow "owned" and should be "controlled" by them, but I don't agree. I think this should also be true in most places on the Fediverse, tho it isn't (as I understand it) on Mastodon (and the like).

[–] mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 minutes ago

Because it would allow people to push narratives and not get called out if they block everyone against them.

Imagine a civil transphobe pushing some narrative that flies below the radar of whatever mods are moderating that comm. If they block all the trans users they cannot get called out on their stuff anymore.

I think there was some discourse on this on black mastodon?

[–] BlackPenguins@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

The way Reddit does is abusive. I called out a guy for spamming, he blocked me, he's the one who creates TV discussion threads, I can't participate anymore.

[–] GratefullyGodless@lemmy.world 1 points 1 minute ago

Why not start your own TV discussion threads with blackjack and hookers?

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 points 1 hour ago

I don't mind it, but if the devs change it I hope they don't take the Reddit route that prevents you from replying to any comment chain the user is in, especially with how small Lemmy is. Direct replies I can understand.

[–] quaff@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Not sure if it's the same on Lemmy, but on Mastodon, your blocks are definitely shared to other instances. So the instance of the user you blocked definitely stores that you've blocked their user. And their system admin can view if their user has been blocked (via the PostgreSQL db).

Technically, hiding your posts from your intended blockee should be doable. But someone could run a modified version of Mastodon and display content from people who have blocked them.

Or just create a new account.

I'm unsure if Lemmy is coded in this same way (storing remote blocks on instances of the blocked user).

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 1 hour ago

You can show them even if you don't allow them to comment.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 7 points 3 hours ago

Im a big proponent of symetric blocking. Normal blocking is like making the person you blocked invisible to you and if the people you block tend to be to you sorta creepy well..... I mean if there was a flasher in the neighborhood and you turn them invisible its great to not see that but....

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 15 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Stamets@lemmy.world 10 points 3 hours ago

And why for a long time I didnt block people. Especially when I was modding TenForward

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Blocking on Lemmy is really just muting, and it should be called that.

A real blocking feature would be nice (it exists on other fediverse platforms).

The devs have said that blocking wouldn't do anything because everything is public, so the blocked user could still access the content they are blocked from but frankly that's bs. If that were true, then there would be no point of banning either, right?

Devs want a monopoly on the power to block people they don't like through the use of bans (and they claim to be all for the people).

[–] tal@olio.cafe 7 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Devs want a monopoly on the power to block people they don't like through the use of bans

Admins can ban on a per instance basis. Moderators can ban on a per community basis. But devs don't have any particular banning power.

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Well, the devs are also the major community moderators and admins on the ml instance, which was the largest for a long time.

They still treat it like their private walled garden.

I may be overreaching with my assumption about their motivations, but then again I may not.

[–] tal@olio.cafe 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Ehh. I don't think that the underlying goal was to try to obtain some sort of "ban monopoly" on the Threadiverse. If they had, they had a ton of things that they could have done that they didn't.

  • Don't support federation in the first place.

  • Have lemmy.ml and friends simply disallow federation with other instances.

  • Break compatibility in new builds to make it harder for people to run other instances. Don't open-source Lemmy in the first place.

Like, I think that it's pretty lame that some of the official Lemmy software support stuff is communities on lemmy.ml, which has an admin situation that I don't really like. But...that seems like an awfully weak lever to be pulling if someone's goal is to try to exclude anyone else from having the ability to restrict users.

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I'm more expressing frustration that they have been approached multiple times about fixing the broken blocking by either renaming it muting (what it actually is), or creating an actual blocking feature. The excuses they provide are nonsensical.

Blocking protects users. Why would a federated platform not want to protect users?

[–] tal@olio.cafe 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I've got a top-level comment about why I'd rather not have a feature of the form OP requested. Reddit's block feature originally worked the way the Threadiverse's block feature presently does. It was later changed, and that change introduced problems.

However, that being said, I do think that there may be a real UI issue if people think that they're preventing responses, but aren't actually doing so, and get frustrated. That'd be a legit UI issue.

considers

I don't think I'd use "mute". In IRC, "mute" refers to a moderation action more analogous to what OP wants. I think that that could still produce confusion.

Usenet uses "kill", for "killfile", in the sense of "automatically killing posts from a user". Probably not a great choice either.

Maybe "ignore" would be better than "block", though. I think that that would make it unambiguous what the operation is doing. I'm guessing that the Lemmy devs just chose "block" because Reddit happened to use it, didn't put a whole lot of thought into it.

Related story: I once worked with a guy who had worked on Yahoo Maps, way back when. It was one of the first mapping services to provide navigation instructions. He told me that he was the one who had, at some point, suggested "bear" as a verb for the navigation decisions (e.g. "bear right"). It was a pretty off-the-cuff decision, but apparently it's confusing to some people, since "bear" isn't a terribly-commonly-used term and can potentially be confused with the animal of the same name. IIRC, Yahoo Maps ultimately changed it, years later, but I understand that not only did they use the term for quite some years, but some other services also copied it, so it had considerable inertia.

kagis

https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/kid-gps-instructions-bear-right/

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