Ask Lemmy

I used to agree with you. Ever since I started just blocking anyone that was being annoying my experience on the web has been great.

People are trying to 'win the argument' for personal satisfaction. They're not trying to self-correct or seek the truth.

I think I’ve only blocked a handful of people over a decade

I'm the opposite; I have hundreds of people blocked, mostly because they are bores.

I think the only thing that has really changed is that way more people just talk about who and what they block instead of just blocking and moving on.

Blocking is tempting when someone actively ignores arguments but keeps coming back with the same thing over and over, or can't avoid ad hominem attacks.

That said, my block list is empty, but I have tagged people so I know if I'm running into them again.

Bots, trolls, egomanics, thin skinneds.

I think there is a difference between different people - and maybe it has changed generationally too. I can think of some obvious potential reasons though:

1. the number of people who are being horrible is increasing. The increasing division in society is reflected online. That means people have more reason to block people.
2. the proliferation of social media bubbles makes people less used to encountering opinions that differ significantly from their own.

I usually find myself blocked by people who just disagree with me. I (increasingly) rarely lose my rag online, but people find it annoying to have someone reply to them who disagrees on certain things and who doesn't just shut up and go away quickly.

I have a pretty high tolerance for that kind of irritation but after a few dozen replies back and forth I'll also use the block button. It's less about not seeing their posts in the future, more as a way to force myself to disengage and get annoyed again.

Like another commenter said, polarization and cemented, frequently extreme, views. You're not going to change their mind on anything, but they're constantly trying to change your mind on everything. I consider them shills and hit that block button.

I also block people who are here "on a mission" for whatever cause. Social media has enough activists, and even if I agree with them, I'm still thinking "will you shut up, man?".

I also block people who intentionally take others out of context as an excuse to attack them or inject drama into every interaction. There's plenty of that to go around, and thankfully, there doesn't seem to be a limit on the number of blocks I can issue.

Basically, I'm not here for drama or activism or circle-jerking any political cause or to suffer immature edgelords. I just wanna talk about cool stuff with rational people. Blocking helps separate the wheat from the chaff in that regard. Anyone who has a pattern of making this place unenjoyable gets blocked

I blocked pretty freely on Twitter till I left the site around when I got the Bluesky invite. I still block freely on there, but not Reddit or Lemmy. I didn't on Reddit cause there was a cap on how many accounts you can have blocked and Lemmy doesn't handle blocks in a way I like so I just don't bother. I like being able to curate my experience and the experience others that interact with me have. I got no energy for shit stains so blocking is easier than constantly knowing they exist.

I think it's more of a space curation thing. As a tumblr user mentioned, "I pressed a button to get rid of an annoying guy and I would do it again".

It's been common advice for a while now to block people you are about to tantrum at. I do like that it's finally catching on.

I haven't blocked anyone on this account, but it's new.

On my last one, I think I blocked three users. I believe all were basically trying to flood a community so that it was unreadable (one, IIRC, was just posting the same large Simpsons or Futurama image repeatedly throughout a thread to try to stop people from talking).

I don't tend to block unless there was clear malice or it is being done in bad faith. Prime examples of this would be accounts that when I look at their history is almost exclusively argumentative posts(this is generally prompted by another reason), people who do personal attacks instead of standard discussion, and people whom it's clear that they aren't trying to add to the conversation, and are trying to derail or push an agenda.

I think it's related to echo chamber behaviour. A way to filter out any dissenting voice because any one that disagrees is as annoying a spammer and as hurtful as a bully.

And at the same time is not that different from walking away from any rando from the street that most probably I won't see ever again. Lol.

I don't know, I personally don't block people, instead I use lots of tags to remember past interactions.

You say "civil disagreements" but from what I've seen blocking mostly happens when they sidestep the issue with a personal attack or ad hominid response.

Also I've seen some blocking just on people being associated with known bad actors like hatemongers or somebody's stalker

Views, positions have gotten more extreme and cemented at that. Probably due to algorithms of "traditional" social media, that focus on them to raise clicks. (This trend to extreme positions and freaking out on the slightest trigger is also noticeable in real life behaviour, imho.) I sometimes block folks because I know there will not be a frank exchange of views but pure hate, extremism.

Plus spammers.

I don't think I ever blocked anyone on reddit, but I've been pretty block happy on lemmy. Mostly because it's a smaller community. With reddit, it was easy enough to unsubscribe from the big popular communities and focus on my niche interests and rigorously modded communities like askHistorians. That way I mostly saw stuff that was genuinely interesting to me. And if someone was annoying, they were just one voice among thousands.

Here on lemmy, there's not enough activity to be overly selective, and I actually enjoy the casual vibe of asklemmy, showerthoughts and nostupidquestions. While I'd never visit their reddit counterparts, here the community is small and it feels more personal. But this also means that there's the occasional poster who I'd rather just not have to see. So, to keep my time on lemmy enjoyable, I block them.

I don't really think it's a big deal, I don't even think it's a criticism of those posters. It's really just that the content of their posts / comments are something that doesn't add value to my experience. I've blocked well-intentioned, but obviously teenage, users because I'm not interested in their personal life questions (but they're entitled to ask!); I blocked someone just for posting too many moth memes when I was getting sick of that fad.

I'm pretty sure I've never blocked anyone for disagreeing with me or my beliefs, but if someone seems like their trolling, or simply has such poor social communication skills that they are coming across that way, I'll block them. I generally look at users history and check if I'm likely to miss anything in the future. But invariably, the type of user I consider blocking generally has a bunch of dumb, negative or uninteresting comments and posts.

Because you can go through your whole life with zero negative social corrections. It's a low trust, collapse of society thing

I have done this a few times, for me it was just that I was writing a reply and 80% through I realized that I didn't want to argue any more, so I blocked the guy after posting it, just so I wouldn't get any more crap to deal with.

Follow-up to this question after seeing many responses (and thank you): What is your default mode for self-doubt when engaging in discussions?

That is, no matter how confident you may be in something, do you maintain an open door, or are your beliefs you block over completely set in stone?

For me, little terrifies me more than becoming the thing I hate; to be clouded by my own cognitive bias; to inadvertently throw myself into an echo-chamber of self-validation. As such I try my best to always maintain at least the slightest bit of doubt in even my strongest beliefs, and to that end to at least let dialogue challenging that come through.

Social media split and modified people so much they're often immediately feeling threatened and block that out, imo.

I'm quite happy to have had some discussions (!) on lemmy where I or the other person could explain the view or clear the (mis)understanding and both be wiser people afterwards.