Ask Lemmy

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.

It's baffling how quick people are to do it. A while ago, I sold an old electronic thing on Marketplace to someone. A day later, they sent me an angry message saying that it didn't work and how I scammed them, then proceeded to block me. I would've liked the opportunity to troubleshoot with them or even refund the item if it turned out to actually be broken, but... blocking me precludes all that. What exactly did they hope to achieve?

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.

There's this streamer I sort of follow who did some reaction streams to proximitychat videos. If you don't know, it's basically this guy in VRchat who joins public lobbies and trolls the people in there - most of them crazily obsessed with the game and roleplay to the point of basically living in VR.

This guy will be in a public lobby for maybe hours, constantly trolling, and all they do is ask him to stop. Maybe they'll threaten to remove him as a friend (which is such a common occurrence that it might almost seems like capital punishment to these terminally online dweebs), but they almost never kick or block him outright.

In the reaction streams the question is always, why not just kick and block the guy? Sure, don't block everyone who makes an annoying remark outright, but as I said, this guy is in there for hours without seemingly any attempt to actually get him to stop. It seems that the easiest thing is to just talk a bit, find out he's there in bad faith and then block him, but they never do.

What I'm getting at is, people should block more. Not that, again, you should block everyone who slightly annoys you or challenges your viewpoint, but as soon as you find out they are there in bad faith, just block and move on. I feel ancient for saying this but as they say: don't feed the trolls.

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.

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've not blocked anyone here or on Reddit. I have on Mastodon but only becase the 3 people I have blocked are fucking interminably boring not because of any philsophival difference of opinion or they were rude or some shit.

I tend not to engage too much, it is some random on the internet after all. I am old, I've been doing this shit from IRL meetups of computer clubs, to BBS's where I actually personally knew just about everyone from meet ups, then Usenet and IRC opened the world, then fora, then reddit (because Usenet died) now here and Mastodon..

I dunno I haven’t blocked anyone and I don’t know if anyone has blocked me.

Im very pro block. I prefer that users can do stuff themselves over moderation honestly. I would like blocking to be reciprical and I have to do a lot of it for communities because the language thing often either seems to not work or my suspicion is the person making the community did not set it. That being said I block few users but tons of communities. The fediverse is not really large enough to subscribe to some stuff and ignore the rest. I block anything I have no interest in or sometimes just because its to niche for me. Things like sports, memes, and communities about like one specific thing like a tv series or video game.

It's how society is degenerating. Respect for each other is gone. The bullets have started to fly.

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.

Cognitive dissonance.

Even when someone says some stupidly egregious shit, or uses thorns instead of th, its way easier to block them than try to understand that however stupid and misguided they may be that there is a person on the other side who may actually have a point somewhere u Herbert the radicalization and between the five brainless they have.

I think blocking is justified when someone actually means you personal physical harm in some way, but that so rarely ever happens.