“Trash mods” on Reddit, who block and ban you for not agreeing with their views… completely different…
I have faith in Lemmy mods
Go post something that paints Russia / China / North Korea in a negative light on .ml and see how long you keep your faith in lemmy mods (and even admins). Not to burst your bubble... most mods here are fine, but every platform has those mods that push an agenda.
My middle school social studies teacher used to give extra credit on things if we brought in a newspaper clipping with a spelling error circled. I didn't understand until years later that getting us to read the paper was the goal, but it sure worked on me.
To be clear I'm not saying it's a solution, just that the proposed solution isn't actually one, either. At the end of the day, it's not possible to both do what OP is asking for and not also make block lists public, so it's all academic at this point.
Imagine a hypothetical situation where I have beef with you. I create a second account and block you. I use this account to scout your posts, then using that other account, I go to all of the posts you're commenting on, and post comments calling you out for being... I don't know, whatever nasty thing I want to call you out for. Because that account has blocked you, you can't see those posts (and presumably not the replies to them, either), and can't defend yourself.
What problem have we solved?
I guess there is a downside of if so many of the sane users block the same nutjobs, then there won’t be anybody to downvote or refute those nutjobs
This has nothing to do with the block system. No matter how it worked, this would be the case. What you're describing isn't a block system, it's moderation, which we still have (though it's obviously up to the moderators of any given community). That is to say, blocking only affects what you see. Moderation affects what everyone sees, which is what you're talking about here.
There's no block system on the whole of the internet that prevents that. Even if they couldn't reply to your comments, they could reply to anyone else's, or post a top-level comment, or make their own post entirely. What do you propose? Don't let them even type your name?
The fact that they're going to all this trouble over this image proves the point the image was making better than anything else possibly could have.
It's the primary component in acid rain! In its gaseous form, it can cause severe burns from only brief contact! And would you believe that autopsies reveal this dangerous compound in the bodies of almost all deceased people? It should be outlawed!
Fun fact: It's actually possible for two countries to both be authoritarian!
Alleged.
The next few books are great, but around the middle of the series it really drug for me. There's a huge number of characters to keep track of and a lot of simultaneous storylines going on, and while some of them are great, some of them are rather dry, and the dry ones always seem to get brought up right when the good ones are reaching a climax. Once you get past those few books, it gets good again, and Brandon Sanderson's books at the end are excellent.
If you're in the mood for a fantasy epic (with all the baggage that entails), it's worth the read. There's also audio books of the whole series and the readers are excellent.
Spotify has this currently. It's an AI DJ that will introduce blocks of music similar to what you'd expect from a radio DJ. I don't think it's too popular, but I actually kind of like it. It's definitely more interesting to listen to than just putting on a playlist - it pulls in music you've liked / favorited and plays genre-centric or themed blocks, and sometimes tosses in new stuff that Spotify thinks you might like. You can freely skip tracks, and if you skip a few in a row it'll take the hint and move onto something else.