There is value to the blocked person not being able to find out in any way, whether you’ve blocked them.
And if they really want to see your content, on federated social media, where you can’t enforce a login requirement to view the content, they’ll always be able to find your content if they really want to.
Stopping them from being able to comment on your posts would be nice, tho. Even better if they can comment, but it doesn’t show up for you or anyone else.
Implementing such a block would be tricky, though. It is not as simple as community bans, as communities are always governed by their home instance.
If you post or comment in a community that isn’t local, someone from a third instance could interact with that content without ever communicating with your home instance.
It can still be done, but it’s a much more involved implementation than community bans.
Even better if they can comment, but it doesn’t show up for you or anyone else.
This would be abused. Imagine I post some manipulated fake news or something. Then I block every single person who points out the bullshit in my post so no one sees it.
I can tell you it has been abused against me multiple times on Reddit. I called someone out for something wrong or bigoted they posted and they blocked me after responding, making me unable to respond back. And presumably kept posting stuff in the future that I just didn’t see, and wasn’t able to call out
It’s a terrible system as it just allows abuse by bad faith actors more than anything else
There is value to the blocked person not being able to find out in any way, whether you’ve blocked them.
And if they really want to see your content, on federated social media, where you can’t enforce a login requirement to view the content, they’ll always be able to find your content if they really want to.
Stopping them from being able to comment on your posts would be nice, tho. Even better if they can comment, but it doesn’t show up for you or anyone else.
Implementing such a block would be tricky, though. It is not as simple as community bans, as communities are always governed by their home instance.
If you post or comment in a community that isn’t local, someone from a third instance could interact with that content without ever communicating with your home instance.
It can still be done, but it’s a much more involved implementation than community bans.
This would be abused. Imagine I post some manipulated fake news or something. Then I block every single person who points out the bullshit in my post so no one sees it.
This happened exactly as you describe on Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/sdcsx3/testing_reddits_new_block_feature_and_its_effects/
reddit implemented that and I’m sure it’s abused
I can tell you it has been abused against me multiple times on Reddit. I called someone out for something wrong or bigoted they posted and they blocked me after responding, making me unable to respond back. And presumably kept posting stuff in the future that I just didn’t see, and wasn’t able to call out
It’s a terrible system as it just allows abuse by bad faith actors more than anything else