They shouldn't be able to do that!
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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I want to stop them from engaging with me. I don't want to let them keep engaging with me without my ability to see what they're saying.
Edit: Give persecuted minorities a way to protect themselves.
This comes from discussions I've had with minorities about the harassment they face on Lemmy and mastodon, and the current ~~block~~ mute feature is more harmful than helpful.
If you're using "block" to curate your content, then it works great. If you're trying to prevent harassment, then it's counterproductive
Engagement is a two-way street. By blocking them you have stopped engaging with them.
The fact that you're upset by what other people are doing somewhere that you can't see and that doesn't affect you seems like a you problem, frankly. Just forget about them.
This isn't about me, this is about what people from persecuted minorities have told me they need, when I bought this exact argument to them.
I used to say what you're saying them they described to be the harassment that they face
In that case substitute "they" for "you" in my comment. The meaning remains the same, as does my position.
Oh god, did Lemmy turn into a libertarian hellscape while I wasn't looking?
What are your opinions on community bans, since all your arguments apply equally to those. Let me see you rectify those positions.
When did an appreciation for free speech become the exclusive domain of the Libertarians? I don't want you to be able to unilaterally silence me, therefore I'm a Libertarian?
Community bans are the domain of a select few individuals who are responsible for maintaining the overall state of the community. If they abuse their power then the community suffers and people should go elsewhere.
Personally, I'd rather a system where one could "subscribe" to specific moderators so that if one goes rogue people could choose to unsubscribe from their moderation actions, that would IMO be the best combination of freedom and control. But I can understand that being rather complicated to implement well and perhaps a little confusing for the users, so I'm okay with the current setup as a compromise.
Minor nitpick with your comment: there's a semantic difference between "Libertarian" and "libertarian", and I suspect you want the latter.
Small-l "libertarian" is used to refer to the political ideology.
Big-L "Libertarian" is used to refer to the Libertarian Party.
The same sort of convention also shows up elsewhere, like "democrat" and "Democrat", "republican" and "Republican", etc.
Fair enough. Either way, my basic point is that an appreciation for freedom of speech is not limited to just one particular niche political ideology or party.
Sure, no dispute there.
How is "not letting you see what I personally wrote" consider to be "unilaterally silencing you" ?
What a mind bogglingly disingenuous response.
I'm not saying that the reddit style block is good.
I'm saying that the current "mute" style block hangs vulnerable people out to dry.
I'm ok trying something else, like maybe what you suggested.
Bear in mind that evrrything you do or say on the fediverse is public, so there is no possible way to stop someone seeing it. Likewise, because the entire system is federated, there is no way to stop an individual from replying to you. Even if the community server rejected their message their own server would be able to display it.
This works well for general discussions, but I can see where it isn't ideal for more sensitive topics. People having those sorts of discussions should probably be using a system that is better suited to their needs.
but the argument that I'm seeing is "its bad to even try to hinder it"
I know that the fediverse creates technical difficulties regarding privacy, but we can't even make a best effort so its not trivial for harassers?
All credit to you for advocating for needs of marginalized groups for protected spaces to communicate, but the fediverse simply isn't the right tool for that. It's entire philosophy, design and implementation is centered around making everything public, from posts and comments to votes and moderation actions.
Asking the fediverse, or the activitypub protocol to allow blocking a user from responding at all is rather like asking a car to be a bike. It's just not what it is. I can't really concieve any way of making a decentralized public forum work like that as there is no central point that can control permissions. It might be possible to design a system where communities can control membership and posting priviledges, but even then, if it's distributed, it would take very little for a hostile instance to simply ignore any central control and display its users posts locally, leading to the same effect as if you just mute them, leaving them visible to others, albiet only on their instance or others that cooperate with it.
I think that those who are in need of a controlled system should probably be looking at a centralized system that is run and controlled by someone, or a group, that they trust. That would give them the best chance to keep discussions private, and access to read or post controlled. Read access would need to be controlled too, or their discussions can just be mirrored to a hostile server and harassment can occur there where the poster is unaware, just as if they'd muted them.
communities arent decentralized, though.
so why not have a community that can control who can comment on what posts?
the privacy part may be a struggle with the way activitypub works, but i dont see why blocking would be, since community banlists already work.
Community block lists or bans are handled at the protocol level (I think this is task that did that), and are pretty simple, in that they just tell a server not to let a particular user comment or post on a particular community. Thats straightforward enough, and as long as the user's server obeys that, the user doesn't get to post.
Trying to do something similar for every user becomes much more complex as it requires coordinating each user's settings to all the relevant servers every time they change. It also leaves open the issue of what happens if a user you'ce blocked simply posts a sibling comment to yours, as you won't see it, but the rest of the community will.
Personally, I would like to see invite only communities where posts and comments are public (it's activitypub, so there's no huding them), but only whitelisted users can post. I know there's a WomensOnly community here that has a hard time stopping men wading in (I'm guilty if that, I saw an interesting postvand didn't notice the community name, but the mods were very nice about it). I'm sure they'd like a way of vetting first time posters and commenters.
It prevents me from responding to it.
I can see it either way, because they're public posts.
I suspect not, because what I'm suggesting would entail an even looser set of restrictions on who can do what than what's already in place.
it prevents you from responding to it
it doesn't prevent you from responding. you're free to respond to everything else. you wouldn't be anywhere close to being silenced.
let me rephrase, i'm open to learning about your suggestion. I don't really understand how that'd work. It sounds kinda like bluesky blocklists, where the blocklist maintainers are effectively like cross-community mods. A user wouldn't be banned in a given community, but if they're in a blocklist you subscribe to then as far as you're concerned they are (because they couldn't see your content and you couldn't see theirs).
if you're talking about something more lenient then that, then I'd need to know details. but the point I was making is that I'm open to alternatives - I'm not married to reddit style blocking, I know it has problems, i just find the problems to be less severe than the lemmy style ~~blocking~~ muting.
I'm not a Bluesky user so I haven't seen this in operation first hand, but yeah, that sounds similar to what I have in mind.
So say someone is a raging bigot. You rely on regular users to flag up things that cross the line for moderators to deal with and correct the record when they lie or post stuff without context eg to provide a balanced perspective. Unless they have blocked most of the active users who would be liable to do these things.
Ah... Would reporting them rather than blocking be more appropriate, then? I recognize reporting isn't always effective, but the right answer seems to be getting the community to police it rather than hiding your commentary from them.
And I recognize I'm speaking from a dearth of experience, here - this isn't something I've dealt with, so I'm genuinely asking!
I'm generally trying to go off of a conversation I had with someone 2 years ago in lemmy. I was generally of the opposite opinion to my current stance, and they explained how the current "everything is public, dont even try to hide it from people" stance is problematic to persecuted minorities. It was 2 years ago so I'm a bit fuzzy on the details - I had to go look it up because someone didnt believe that the conversation even existed, but i didnt re-read the whole comment section.
their point was that, while total privacy in a federated service is likely impossible, you want to make it non-trivial for harassers to do harassment.
reporting is absolutely more appropriate than blocking, but blocking has a few advantages:
If you can't see the replies how can you possibly be harassed by it?
The same arguments apply, though.
Your version of blocking doesn't exactly handle the problem you're describing well, either, as someone wishing to spread hate or "off-screen harassment" can block their direct target which, under the model, will mean they can't see it, and then post.
If you care what they are saying, you shouldn't block them. If you don't care, you shouldn't care they are commenting on you.
I don't want other people being able to hide criticism of their posts/comments they don't like from me. Allowing you to completely block engagement with your posts would just strengthen echo chambers and bolster misinformation IMO.
What I'm saying also protects vulnerable communities at least a little, and what you're saying leaves them vulnerable.
If they're able to comment on my content I'm my communities, then I need to be able to see if they're spreading misinformation about me to my friends and acquaintances. Rather than just blind myself to that, I'd rather put barriers between my content and their ability to do that.
Imo protecting people from harassment is more important than protecting my ability to combat misinformation on some strangers' posts.
You might be better served using the "report" button if you are indeed dealing with harassment. That would be the appropriate tool for such things.
But I am going to go out on a limb and guess that you want to be able to just unilaterally punish anyone you don't like.
That's a limb that wouldn't support your weight.
I used to support your concept of block, until I was in a thread like this one, and someone from a minority community explained to me the consequences of these design decisions
You want to at the click of a button stop everyone from reading something you don't want to see. If you dislike reading a persons comments, then you can block them and no longer see what they write. If you are being harassed you can report it, but what you want to do is police other users as a regular user.
You are also making the "won't someone think of the children" argument as your (so far) only point.
This is a place of public discourse, what you want can be achieved using a txt editor and a friend.
"won't someone think of the children" isn't always wrong.
What's absolutely crazy to me is that you say "blocking won't work because they can get a new account" and then in the very same breath suggest that reporting is a viable strategy. Either it is or it isn't, which is it?
Public/private discourse is a false dichotomy. What are your thoughts on a community's ability to ban someone? Should groups lose that ability, since apparently it's both ineffective and toxic, apparently?
It is always wrong to frame an argument in this fashion, its a emotional ploy for a weak argument. Instead use a better line of reasoning.
I never said that, likely you have me confused with someone else.
Mod log exists for this reason and communities are often defederated for abusing this power. And I have made no comment on the effectiveness or toxicity of mod powers. You sound like you want to be a mod but the worst kind of biased one.
yeah, me wanting to be a mod is totally consistent with my view, that I have expressed here, that mods are both overworked and ineffective.
whats that? i didnt say it to you? no way! its almost like you created a crazy version of me in your head and accuse me of things based on it!
They are not overworked and ineffective, at least not all. And no people can make conclusions on others based on their actions and words, you are not able to stop that.
it is my impression that they are \
didn't lemm.ee shut down just this year, because they were overwhelmed, not just to the technical demands of running an instance, but because of all the social bullshit?
and when are they going to have time to keep up-to-date on all the current dogwhistles?
how is a mod going to be able to effectively judge if a harassment report is true if the harassment depends on if the harasser is spreading lies about the reporter?
and regardless of if my impression is accurate or not, that is my impression. what in the name of the everloving baby jesus would make you think thats something that I would want to deal with?
im not even that active on lemmy. just in bursts like today where someone says something that gets me riled up.
Then go to a private platform. This is a platform for public discourse, not private communities.
PS: You could even make a community on lemmy and ban people as it's moderator. Although a different platform may still be a better fit.
i mean, i've linked you to the conversation I had.
have you tried to talk to anyone about it? or are you just some white dude confidently saying that nobody should change anything because it works for you, so it should work for everyone else?
because you really sound like that.
You have? I must have missed it, could you re paste it?
Odd, not sure what you are getting at. Talk about what? Are you sure you are replying to the right person. Also please continue to try and guess my gender, race, and world view, since it is clear you want to paint me in a way that you can disregard my statements. You wish to make me less then human, so please do.
second time I've shared this with you (or at least a reply in the same thread). I dont think that the conversation is in one linear thread, but i dont remember since it was 2 years ago.
kind of like the things you've been saying to both me _and other people in this thread (?!?!?) that I'm a powerhungry mod wannabe? is that not painting me in a way so that you (and others?!?!) can disregard my statements? if not, then why do you keep bringing it up?
2 wrongs don't make a right, but at least I'm trying to convey the concerns that I learned about to the best of my ability. as best I can tell, you don't even seem to want to admit that there is any issue with the current way things are.
because fundamentally all I'm trying to do is say that the things that OP wans are reasonable for a person to want when engaging with a social network, and I'm using this previous conversation I had as groundwork with which to explain that. Which I'm evidently doing poorly.
I had a feeling playing the victim and name calling was coming next after your last message.
But just in case anyone arguing in good faith needs it spelled out: Not every thing has to cater to every audience. Lemmy, at least for me, is primarily for sharing information, whether news, opinions or just memes. On such a site, I believe it is more important to avoid echo chambers and misinformation. So it requires a moderator or an admin to ban people. It's not as if Lemmy is an unmoderated hellscape, it just leans more towards free speech over creating perfectly safe spaces than you may like. Avoiding echo chambers and misinformation benefits all users, including minorities. Therefore, every site hast to find a balance for it's use-case. I would expect many people, whether minorities or otherwise, can handle occasional mean words or words they disagree with on their screens. But it is also alright if you are more sensitive or not in a good place psychologically and don't want to deal with this. There are other places on the internet you can go, that do have the kind of blocking you want. Some places will lean towards free speech, some towards heavy moderation. That's the great thing about the internet, not every place has to be the same.
I'm sorry, but I feel like you need to support the statement "This comes from discussions I’ve had with minorities about the harassment they face on Lemmy and mastodon" a bit more. Your whole argument for limiting the speech of others is predicated on this statement.
I'm not saying that minorities couldn't face harassment on Lemmy, but Lemmy is by far the most liberal and minority supportive online forum I have ever experienced. Part of the reason Lemmy is so niche is because it doesn't have the mainstream attention other platforms have and is heavily moderated.
If you are engaging in an instance where harassment is occurring the moderators generally ban the person quickly. If the moderators of that instance aren't doing their job people generally leave and the instance dies from lack of content (there just aren't that many people on Lemmy). If someone follows you from a different instance to another the current instance moderators will likely ban them even if the one you met them on doesn't. Finally, if they are direct messaging you you can block them, they can continue to message you but you won't see their messages and neither will anyone else.
What minority group have you talked with that are receiving harassment and what extra protections were needed that aren't already here?
the discussion was 2 years old, so I'm a bit fuzzy - it looks like it was only 1 person. but it was enough to convince me from basically saying what yall are saying here "don't expect privacy on a public site" to "there should be an attempt at privacy, and people facing harassment should have some measure of control to protect themselves"
I didnt feel the need to make the provide their credentials as a minority and prove to me that they're being harassed and that muting the harasser wasn't enough. What they said made sense.
Looking at the post you reference the person you talked to is a transgender person who moderates both LGBTQ+ and Transfem in Lemmy.blahaj.zone, they provide more than enough evidence of their minority status, but that wasn't really needed. The question was what group was being harassed and thus this interaction would imply that the LGBTQ community is being harassed on Lemmy.
What I feel like you missed in your previous discussion is that the other person was talking about privacy in the context of being outed in the real world. The harassment being referred to was in the context of your real life identity being revealed or connected to your online conversation.
Under this context they are looking for a feature similar to how Facebook (at least previously) allowed you to pick who could see your post as you were posting it. That way you could individually disallow specific people or groups from seeing them.
This doesn't imply that the issue is that someone is being harassed on Lemmy and thus we need better blocking options. It's really only an issue for someone who wants to dox themselves and still have private conversations, in which case Lemmy and most online forums can't accomplish that natively across all instances/subreddits/groups. The only solution is to have a private instance with vetting and heavy moderation. If you don't dox yourself you can generally avoid the whole issue here.
Based on this I think you're making a different argument than what the block feature is or ever could be.