Musk’s plan to axe X's block button is a real win for stalkers and abusers.
Musk’s plan to axe X's block button is a real win for stalkers and abusers.
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The billionaire this week posted his hoped-for change that “the block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, a public post”.
If I understand the change aright, that's an excellent move in my book.
What it sounds like Twitter is doing now is how Reddit used to work. When you ignore a user, you won't see their responses, but other users can.
Then Reddit changed it to "blocked user cannot respond", which people on Reddit promptly started abusing to, in heated arguments, make a comment and then promptly block the other person, so that it looked like they weren't responding. You wound up with people commenting all over a thread with stuff like "this user blocked me, but here's my response to this other comment". Was one of the several major moves that Reddit made that I think were in error and made me less happy with the site.
Lemmy works the same way Reddit originally did as well; that's how I'd want social media to generally work.
EDIT: It might also be that this is only a partial move in that direction, so that a block prevents a user from responding but not seeing a post. If so, that'd be an improvement, I think, but not as far as I'd like things to change.
There's a huge difference between what a site like Reddit is used for and how Twitter is often used for. Reddit is all about discussion, so blocking discussion is bad (as you pointed out). Twitter is used a little for discussion (their character limit doesn't really allow much discussion), but it's mostly used for informing the world about whatever you are doing or care about. Famous people and companies use it for advertising, and normal people use it for letting people know what's going on in their world. Stalkers can use this information to figure out where people are in the world. Being able to COMPLETELY block a stalker is a good thing. Now people with stalkers will once again be afraid to openly say what they are doing in the world.
But there's nothing to stop a stalker just making another account to follow you if they really want to. I dont see blocking doing much good there as there is no such thing as being able to stop your public posts being viewed, because they're public.
I still think its a bad idea to remove blocking just becuase people want to remove things they dont want to see (like right wing billionaire arseholes) but I dont think giving people a false sense of security is a good reason against it.
I dont see blocking doing much good there as there is no such thing as being able to stop your public posts being viewed, because they're public.
My thoughts as well. Someone dedicated to harassing you isn't going to give up when they get blocked. They'll just make another account and do it again, but now with the knowledge of what gets under your skin.