Do you have a criteria for what qualifies as block-worthy offence or are you just doing it when you feel like it?
Bonus question: how long is your block list?
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My blocklist is 30~40 users long. [For reference, my blocklist in Reddit reached 400 or so.]
To keep it short, I typically block people who, egregious or consistently:
- show lack of reasoning, even if I agree with the conclusion
- misrepresent what others say
- take things off context to judge them, even if I agree with the judgement
- vomit lots of “hard” certainty on things that they cannot reasonably know (e.g. the others’ emotional states over the internet)
- engage in passive aggressiveness (note that I tolerate some clear hostility, just not pass-aggro)
- show clear signs of sealioning (e.g. “I don’t understand” + misrepresentation of what someone else said)
- tell others shit like “trust me” = “I expect you to be a gullible piece of rubbish”
Note that “egregious or consistently” are key words here. Like, I’m not going out of my way to block someone out of a brainfart; this is not some sort of petty revenge, it’s just removing from my sight people who I believe to not contribute with my overall Lemmy experience. I also don’t take issue when people block me, for whatever reason they might have.
I’ll reply to myself to avoid editing the above. The other user made me realise that what I said about pass-aggro is unclear - since the expression is used with multiple meanings.
In this specific context, by passive aggressiveness, I mean “an utterance showing politeness as a disguise for rudeness”.
I’ll give you guys an example. Imagine that Alice says “I saw a potato tree today”. And Bob replies to Alice one of the following:
- “Potatoes do not grow on trees.”
- “Potato tree? Are you braindead or what?”
- “Yeah sure, and I saw some unicorns today. Because you know, potatoes totally grow on trees, right?”
- “Oh dear perhaps you’re a bit confused, so let me enlighten you. Potatoes do not grow on trees. I understand that this might be a bit too complex for you to understand, but put on some effort, okay?”
The first three are not pass-aggro. #1 is simply dry (no attempt at politeness or rudeness); #2 is simply rude (I’m typically OK with that within limits). #3 uses irony and sarcasm in such an obvious way that it comes off as simply rude, there’s no attempt to use the irony to disguise the insult. Only #4 is pass-aggro, as it calls Alice stupid and lazy in a disguised way.
I tend to block people who do this because they rub me off the wrong way - it shows a lack of dignity to be upfront that you don’t see in plain rudeness.
Sealioning is a made up term by those too lazy to explain a concept and looking to antagonise others because they “cannot possibly be unaware of X fact that I care so much about”.
Funnily enough saying someone is sealioning falls within the passive-aggressive behaviour you seem to despise so much.
Sealioning is the discussion equivalent of a DoS (denial of service) attack. In both, the content of the reply is irrelevant; the goal is to flood the person/machine with multiple requests, until they reach a limit and
stop droppingdrop the requests altogether.And while the concept has some problems because it handles some esoteric babble called “intentions” (see: “goal”), it’s still useful when you focus on the behaviour instead.
Funnily enough saying someone is sealioning falls within the passive-aggressive behaviour you seem to despise so much.
Pass-aggro is about tone, not content. You can state something like “you’re sealioning” in a passive aggressive way, or a rude way, or under a bald-on record, so goes on.
[Edit reason: phrasing.]
Sealioning is the discussion equivalent of a DoS (denial of service) attack. In both, the content of the reply is irrelevant; the goal is to flood the person/machine with multiple requests, until they reach a limit and stop dropping the requests altogether.
Thank you for putting it this way. This clarifies some things for me.
You made me notice a revision error in my own comment (“stop dropping” is supposed to be simply “drop”). I’m glad that the meaning is still retrievable though, due to the analogy.
I wasn’t the one who created the analogy, by the way, but it’s damn useful/didactic. Specially because there’s also a sealioning equivalent of DDoS, far more effective than when done by a single entity.
I knew what you meant. It is damn useful, especially for understanding peoples motives offline too. Saving the analogy to my brain for later use.
Tankies go straight to the Shadow Realm
I block assholes. It drives me up the wall when someone is disrespectful for no reason. I also dislike those who get unnecessarily aggressive on the first message because the previous comment doesn’t align with their views. I’ll usually set a boundary and let people correct their attitude. After that, I’ll block.
I’m also considering blocking those who make a hobby of subverting the previous comment by twisting people’s words and overloading them with something the person did not mean to say, but those are trickier.
I’m also considering blocking those who make a hobby
of subverting the previous comment by twisting people’s words and overloading them with something the person did not mean to say, but those are trickier.What do you have against hobbies? Why do you think that people should only eat, work and sleep? Do you loathe people that much??? /s
Serious now. I block this sort of people, and heavily recommend others to do the same. They’re a waste of time; even if you clarify what they’re distorting they’ll do it again, and again. It is a bit tricky because genuine miscommunication also happens, but I typically solve that by checking the profile for consistent behaviour. The “controversial” sorting works wonders here.
Yeah, I have no patience for these types. Just dealt with one. They love to assume something weird and awful that no one would’ve meant and then harass you about it. I struggle not to be rude to dickheads like that.
Pretty much my criteria exactly. An off remark is fine, we all fuck up once in awhile, but consistent rude or dishonest behaviour gets them a block. It’s not worth my time and emotional energy to deal with angry children. I get enough of that at work already.
What I think is funny is someone I blocked also responded to your comment.
That’s why I tag people who do this. It becomes much easier to figure out who is consistently being a shithead or pushing an agenda.
What are you using to tag users? I want to do this too.
EDIT: nevermind, you mentioned it in another comment (Boost). It wouldn’t work for me as I’m using Lemmy from a computer. Still, it’s some great functionality, I wish that it existed for the web interface too. (There was/is a Firefox extension for that in Reddit, and I miss it. It wasn’t only useful to tag “bad” users, but also good ones - I used it all the time in r/linguistics to tag the expertise area of some laymen.)
It’s definitely a feature that’s sorely needed for the browser versions.
those who get unnecessarily aggressive on the first message because the previous comment doesn’t align with their views
i feel like thats more of a turbo-redditor-moved-to-lemmy thing
I’ve blocked a few bots but I would only block an actual person if they’re harassing me. I’d rather downvote or report people that are saying hateful things.
Ad hominem -> block.
I have 85 people blocked. Most of them for spamming, probably. The rest for harshing my mellow by aggressively being assholes to others or just because I’ve realized my personal experience is more pleasant with their absence.
I don’t owe my attention to anyone. I see lots of comments here about refusing to censor alternate points of view, but that’s not it. I can enjoy healthy disagreement, but some folks make some agenda their entire identity and I just get tired of them constantly injecting it into every conversation.
On the other hand there’ve been many people I’ve disagreed with, engaged with, found some common ground, and continue to enjoy their presence even knowing we don’t see eye to eye. Or, if they post about other things, I just ignore the rants I disagree with. It’s not filtering out points of view, it’s filtering out people whose presence makes Lemmy a source of stress rather than an interesting, vibrant community. That’s obviously very subjective, but it’s my block list and my peace of mind.
The people who constantly post about Gaza in every single thread are the worst in this regard. While yes, the genocide isn’t okay and it should be discussed, there’s a time and place and it doesn’t need to be brought up everywhere in every discussion. Many of them are needlessly hostile when this is brought up to them and you just get labeled a genocide supporter. Sometimes I just want to scroll and read threads without hearing about children dying all the time. Gaza is their entire personality and it seems like nothing else matters to them in their lives.
I don’t block people because I think it’s important to understand that people have different viewpoints and ways of articulating them
There are other reasons to block as well. Simply just being an asshole is not a viewpoint I think anyone should be paying attention to.
Right. Blocking people for no other reason than “I disagree” or “I don’t like that” turns the place in to an echo chamber. Like, if that’s what you want, fine, but one reason I left Reddit was to get out of the echo chamber.
Mostly just tankies, they irritate the hell outta me.
Not tagging NSFW posts
2
You usually block people for good audience sight-lines and sensible character interactions. It can also communicate relationships non-verbally.
And you want to avoid awkward shuffling as they enter and exit the stage.
Blocking is important in film as well, but less so due to close ups, shot reverse-shoot, and editing.
Posting/commenting right wing garbage or tankie “North Korea is a great place” bullshit. Also flat earther crap. Pretty much any insane, out of touch with reality stuff.
- Genocide denial
- Fascism
- Racism
- Bad-faith arguments
- Really really stupid & low effort
- Consistently really really negative
- Vote manipulation
- Spam, CSAM
I’ve banned 1074 accounts from the instance I run, most of them for boring reasons like spam. Usually between 1 and 10 per day.
My block list has I think 7 people on it. I only block if someone makes my Lemmy experience worse any time I see something from them. Disagreement I am fine with. It’s healthy to see other viewpoints, even if I don’t agree. (Or if it’s an issue of morality, like not viewing minorities as people, a grim reminder that people think like that. Fortunately by the time I see those, someone else has replied on the matter.) Being inflammatory and adding no value to any discussions is what gets you blocked for me. I know I have blocked several spammers, but it appears that their accounts got deleted.
I have blocked many communities though. It’s mostly porn. Furry porn, not for me. Anime porn where the subjects look too young… Just don’t want to see that. Porn that just isn’t my taste. I would just block NSFW but there is some NSFW that isn’t necessarily porn that I want to see. (Ex: frank discussions about anatomy)The stuff that isn’t porn is just communities that are inflammatory echo chambers.
I browse all because I don’t have many subscriptions that are active, so that is why I have so many communities blocked.
Anime porn where the subjects look too young
That seems to be all of it. The amount of pedo bullshit on this platform is staggering. I still see it even with instance and keyword filters.
I usually tag problematic users (usually those who constantly discuss in bad faith, are needlessly hostile or rude towards other users, or push dis/misinformation and propaganda) so I know who are repeat offenders with consistent bad behaviour, but I rarely block people unless it’s very clear that they have no interest in participating in good faith or are so irritating that I can’t deal with them anymore. A lot of problematic users still have valuable things to say and I’d rather not make my feed an echo chamber, even if those people often piss me off with their nonsense. But with some of them it sure is tempting.
I don’t block people, even if someone is being stupid I doubt I’d run into them that often again. But of course, if someone was personally harrassing me, I’d block, it just hasn’t happened here.
If someone is harassing you, IMO the best approach is not blocking but contacting the admins; either of your instance or the person’s instance. If you simply block the person they’ll keep harassing you, but now on your back as you won’t see their comments.
I block people for my own peace of mind. If they want to follow behind me and be public assholes, they are just showing everyone else who they are.
A bunch of my innocuous posts wind up with a single lonely downvote. It makes me laugh because someone out there is really fucking butthurt over something I don’t even remember any more.
When it’s just for your own peace of mind, or just some muppet downvoting you all the time, that’s fine. However, harassment strictu sensu often causes social repercussions that harm the person being harassed, even if they’re oblivious to that. And often harassers don’t just stop at one person, they pick multiple targets; it is not the sort of people who you want in a community.
So often it’s simply better for you and everyone else to report them instead.
Yeah just hiding the content of people who harass you is really not a good practice. It’s the whole reason why Reddit introduced two-way blocking, they know that this type of harassment can’t actually be combated by simply ignoring it. Here on Lemmy we don’t have that, the next best thing though is to report to admins or Community moderators, but I would recommend admins since they can take care of the users more efficiently.
Yeah I agree these types of people really should not be in communities and instances. While it may be up to moderators and admins to ban people on the site and communities, it is us the users who are responsible for bringing these types of bad people to their attention, by reporting and reaching out.
Think of being a user on these sites as being like part of a neighborhood watch all the time. You are obligated to report people who are behaving suspicious or in ways that are harmful to the community. Maybe if one or two people ignore them it’s fine but if a majority of people do this it won’t be, and isn’t. It’s part of the reason why I think that there are so many trolls and bad faith actors here who never get banned from communities or instances despite the fact that they have zero restraint about where and when they lash out at someone. It’s because people just block those guys and never report them.
Well said.
I think Lemmy’s devs seem to not understand this problem otherwise they would’ve kept a version of two way blocking in Lemmy and wouldn’t fight this idea so much:
- https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4041#issuecomment-1777961579
- https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4205
Proper blocking systems for preventing harassment need to at a basic level stop people from replying to the user or their content. People can argue that this can be abused but not having it will be abused more in exactly the same way you said.
I think that it would be possible to implement true/two-way blocking while minimising the amount of abuse, if the blocklist is public. As in, if Alice simply mutes Bob, nobody knows it; but if Alice blocks Bob, you can see in Alice’s profile “blocking: Bob”.
I also think that the mute / block user option needs to have a confirmation window. From this thread it’s obvious that a lot of people are muting bad faith users, instead of reporting them. That’s bad because the problems never reach the ears of those who can act on them.
(I’m just throwing ideas around, mind you. Take them with a grain of salt, there might be some catch that I didn’t realise.)
It’s best to report people who engage in harassment, trolling, and bad behavior in-general. That way they can be identified and actioned by moderators and admins.
In the case of people on other sites it’s best to message the admins of the other server directly so they may take action accordingly.
