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 dropping drop 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think I’ve blocked one or two people on lemmy. Only because they like to spam posts all at once and it will fill up an entire page with just their shit.
Outside of that I’ve never blocked anyone, nor do I ever really want to block anyone.
It does actually make a difference. Especially on a small platform like Lemmy. I'd say that around 50% of the time that I see a blocked user make a comment and I log out to read it, it just confirms that blocking them was the right choice.
Man I wish we had a "flag" option as an alternative. I don't wanna block anyone because sometimes I still wanna read their comments/posts.
I just want to flag them so when I come across them again I can keep in mind that they did a no-no before.
You could even use it to categorize (this user is a spammer, this one a troll, etc.)
Some people are just completely deranged, like, pathologically deranged. Those people just annoy me, and I don't want to get annoyed/angered every time I read their bullshit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In my case, most users I've blocked were for shitty behavior. I have zero tolerance for that. If someone speaks to me or others in a way they wouldn’t dare to in real life, I block them instantly. I don’t mind disagreements or different opinions, but I won’t waste time with mean or nasty people.
The second most common reason is shallow, one-sentence replies only meant to fish for upvotes without adding value to the discussion. Jokes are fine, but if you're just echoing what's popular for applause, you’re gone. Nothing wrong with that per-se, but I’m more interested in serious conversations.
Lastly, there are petty reasons. For example, overused phrases like 'fuck around and find out' will get you blocked too.
People that are needlessly hostile, and persistent on continuing their hostility get blocked. I've only needed to do that 1 or 2 times on Lemmy since I already blocked the most overtly hostile instances.
Same. I probably won’t even notice if I keep running into them making the place toxic, but if they just want to argue or be offensive and won’t stop, yeah I’ve blocked a couple
I wish that more people would report the users who behave like this, that type of behavior is against many Community rules and also many instance rules.
In my opinion I'd rather report people than block them since when they get banned they get banned for everyone. Blocking is like pretending to ban them while letting them run wild, it's a great idea for places like Nostr but it's not a great idea for Lemmy since the whole idea of fediverse is interconnection with moderation.
Me, in the meantime: "fuck, now I need to know what's written there!", followed by machine translation, followed by a bored "...ah."
(Replace the bored "...ah." with some genuine laugh when it's something from szmer.info. I don't speak Polish but people in that instance have an odd sense of humour, that I enjoy quite a bit.)
I agree. I could block 90% of the people online and there would still be an endless feed of new content to pay attention to. I don't miss anything by blocking users that I wouldn't be missing either way.
incessant hornyposting on unrelated topics. Not like making a sex joke a couple of times, but a persistent history of pornbrain comments in non-NSFW communities. It's just annoying.
My blocklist (outside of spam accounts) is like 5-6 people on Lemmy. But it's definitely larger on other social media sites because there are a cesspool of people doing #2 and 3.
I should clarify to say I've never been in a space where CP was being distributed.
But one of the times it was on reddit (just before the blackout, actually). One of the "recommended" posts to me was a post with a collection of pictures of random screenshots of naked babies and toddlers in bathing suits from random instagram accounts/family vloggers maybe. It had low double digit upvotes but a hundred comments, the top level ones being just...really creepy, and the replies calling them out (I'm assuming these were people who also got the post "recommended" to them, like me).
I reported it and tried to block it from my memory. It freaked me out how many people were in the post defending it as innocent post of just "kids having fun", when like...it clearly was not. I remember the OP's profile having a bunch of posts like that too, even though it was a very new account.
Anyone reading this , please don't post your babies/toddlers on social media 🙏
What is CSAM? It is an abbreviation for many things apparantly. Are you referring to 'Child sexual abuse material'? Did you encounter such things on Lemmy?
So far I luckily didn't come across anything like that but I also blocked all porn-related instances that I saw so far.
Yep, lemmy was hit with a bunch of CSAM spammers last year, and I was unfortunate enough to see a post before mods/admin were able to do something about it.
If you see the first two things you need to report them, especially the second one. Honestly when it comes to the second one not reporting it is irresponsible. That shit is highly illegal and you need to report that to instance admins so that it can be taken care of ASAP.
Spam isn't as much of a problem but you do need to report it as well, bystander effect is not an excuse either. When it comes to reporting content you need to think about it like you are the only one who ever saw it or the only one who will see it. That's how it is sometimes.
Again if you report before you block that's largely fine. I mainly say this because there are people who block without reporting, and that absolutely is not fine.
Hexbear users mostly. About 20 of them harrased me because I said South Park is funny. One guy was even using an alt to insult me on all of my unrelated comments. That was my introduction to Hexbear lol.
I’m blocking a couple of bots but no actual people.
Though I guess I would block someone if they were being persistently trying to harass me. I can take offensive internet behavior, but not if you’re coming after me as a person.
My opinions are
formed by choosing the things that survive the gauntlet of disagreement, so that’s one “reason” down. And I haven’t yet encountered anyone who has any other way of hurting me with words, so I haven’t needed to block anyone.
I guess there’s mentioning poop while I’m eating, but those people tend to be family and I can’t block them.
I try not to block people, but if you prove to me you want nothing but to put me down with shit you made up in your head about me, that's usually what does it. Also tankie assholes or just people who want to gin up an argument where there shouldn't be one.
I have blocked a LOT of communities because I don't want my feed to be half porn and images of weirdly sexualized anime girls who appear to be children. That shit is insanely creepy and besides not enjoying it, I don't want people who glance at my phone to think I'm a pervert.
“… Harris isn’t left enough so they’re going to go with the orange fascist instead.” The level of political illiteracy needed to create that line of thought is staggering. “ My right-of-centre candidate isn’t as socialist as I’d like so I’ll vote for the candidate who is massively and dangerously further to the right of her.” What the actual fuck? It’s people like that who make me question the value of democracy.
I don't block them because I enjoy seeing them twist themselves into knots trying to ignore how FPTP works and digging deep holes for themselves when called out. The mental gymnastics are Olympic-level.
insulting and calling what they are doing ‘a discussion’.
Telling everyone else they suck on a game that requires they participate.
Making rude demands of others in a free for all group that benefits themselves only.
Being on the internet whether it’s on a forum, dating site, YouTube or game is for entertainment. We’re each paying for this entertainment too. So if your idea and my idea do not line up for what qualifies as entertainment then we don’t need to be interacting.
Only if they're very annoying and waste everyones time. And annoying bots. I've changed instances and now my blocklist is only one bot. Usually when I'm offended, it's spam. Rarely someone getting personal and yelling at people. I report that and usually the account gets suspended and I don't need to block anything. I'm not hesitant, though. If someone wastes my time more than once, I don't see any reason to continue with that. But since I only watch my subscribed communities, I'm not very exposed to those kinds of people. And I don't care at all if someone disagrees with me or has some mild behavioral issues. I'm used to that (on the internet) and wouldn't block someone just for that.
I don't block anyone because I do not like to shove other perspectives out of view and pretend they don't exist. Also I grew up on old internet where having a thick skin was a necessity.
If you're talking about people who do illegal or objectively terrible things, this is a terrible use case. As Lemmy's block system is really meant only as a feed curation tool. It's for things that you "don't wike and don't wannna to see 👶".
So to use it on people who are actually bad actors is not a good idea, and certainly isn't a good idea to encourage its use in that manner. After all if everybody ignores these people and nobody reports them then they are allowed to run wild for much longer if not indefinitely. That's why reporting is encouraged, it helps take care of bad faith users.
I think a lot of people need to get used to the idea that it is partially their responsibility to deal with bad faith users by reporting. On big tech platforms it didn't make much of a difference because they didn't care, instance admins here do care though, and many don't have the legal defenses that those companies have especially when it comes to illegal shit that might be posted by some of these awful depraved individuals. Let them know about it sooner rather than later, report the trolls.
I agree with this very much, I don't really have any desire to hide opposing viewpoints either. Which is really the only reason why you would block somebody on Lemmy using its highly crippled blocking system.
On other platforms like Mastodon and Reddit most of the reason why I block people stems around bad behavior, like legitimately objectively harmful behavior. Things that are considered objectionable even by instance admins, and also these platforms allow you to view blocked users and their content after they have been blocked and also submit reports if they continue to behave badly. It's more like a soft moderation tool than a content feed curation tool on those platforms.
When it comes to blocking on Lemmy blocking these types of people is actually a bad idea. These people need to be reported so that they can be dealt with and they don't cause more harm to the community. What they don't need is to be blocked and ignored so that they can continue perpetrating their evil shit without other people getting upset.
This is especially true in the case of people who do illegal stuff, that stuff can get the instance in trouble.
Agree with this perspective and this is also why I've not got anyone blocked on here. However it's possible both of us are fortunate enough to have never encountered a stalker or some kind of determined harassment campaign.
Trolling, posting disgusting and horrifying pictures in imageai community (nothing to report, just not what I'm there for), and that one person who keeps making new accounts to complain about their life and be hostile to anyone who tries to offer advice or hope.
I rarely block people. I find it better just to leave Lemmy communities with problematic/annoying users.. lemmy.world communities are the worst in that sense.
e.g. it might be me commenting in a non-political community about something random and then people jumping in and politicizing the thread and/or anything I wrote there. If I wanted to talk politics I'd join a politics sub, dealing with people that turn each and every post into something political gets old fast. And if the community moderators aren't interested in moderating that shit then what's the point sticking around in that community? So rather than block people I just leave those communities entirely & move on.
I don't on Lemmy because it doesn't really do anything besides hiding their posts.
On Mastodon I block people who are AI trolls, political trolls, reactionaries, and in general people who are hostile.
People who are objectively horrible people, sometimes it's because I see them doing it, but other times because they lashed out directly at me.
Most blocks on Mastodon are preceded by reports to server admins but I still block them because it usually takes time for people to be moderated.
it doesn’t really do anything besides hiding their posts.
That's what I need it to do. Out of my sight. Doesn't matter if they can still see my posts. I hope they write me a lot of long and nasty messages that I never see.
It's not about them seeing my posts it's their ability to interact without my knowledge since different types of harassment can be quite harmful even if you don't see it (i.e. lying, disinformation, accusations). So it's not in my best interest to block people on a platform where the block system treats the threat of these people as non-legitimate by allowing their continued interaction and replies.
I hope they write me a lot of long and nasty messages that I never see.
I sincerely hope you never meet with any of the more elaborate trolls or bad-faith actors who use more aggressive tactics like accusations or disinformation against you. This can be very harmful, even more so if you cannot see it and respond to or report it, especially reporting it.
Also a lack of reporting and substituting reporting for blocking can be harmful in the long run because when users are not reported, they may never be actioned by mods or admins. Which is awful for the health of the community, maybe you think others can report for you but bystander effect is real and the people who think this way eventually compound allowing trolls and bad-faith actors to operate longer if not indefinitely, so it doesn't benefit anyone to hide them and pretend they don't exist.
Heads up, Lemmy's block system is more like muting. I wouldn't really recommend it's use non-discriminately. This is because blocking simply hides users it doesn't prevent interaction on posts or comments, it doesn't deal with them if they are actually problematic users.
So if you see people being trolls, harassing others, or making bad faith arguments I highly recommend reporting them, as it can be helpful to alert admins and moderators of bad people and take care of them.
I see, so if I don't want to see a users posts and I block them, I won't see them, but everyone else will? I mean in a thread we are both contributing to?
When I remember that it is Guy that post things that ennoys me, it is Time for a block. It doesn't have to be something I'm angry about if the user is active enough in a space I frenquent but their post doesn't interest me, I block them to clear my view.
I'l lucky to never had to block someone because I got on an internet fight with them.
Everyone here talking about blocking for political reasons and bad behavior while I'm over here blocking because you post unfunny memes.
I blocked several users who post far-left memes because they just sucked and weren't even funny in the slightest, they just wanted to get their point across rather than make a funny memr
Beyond the obvious trolls and complete loons, I also block people who never contribute an original comment or post and only reply to other comments in order to "correct" other people or "call them out". Their comment history makes it immediately obvious when they are this type of user.
They strike me as particularly cowardly and obnoxious, because they only want to attack / start something against, and never risk a simple original assertion of their own. Offense being the best defense, etc. They probably think of themselves as verbal judo masters.
IOW, they are basically using Lemmy as fodder for their pedantry. I'm not interested at all in engaging with this type of jackass. Unfortunately there are a lot of them on the internet. My block list is long.
I think my blocklist is about 1/3 spam, 1/3 hatespeach, blatent disinformation and promoting genocide, and 1/3 untagged nsfw. Its a couple dozen users right now.
On my old account it was hundreds (almost all hate-speech, disinformation, and promoting genocide), but Hexbear has been defederated and I've givien up and blocked .ml so I don't run into much of that anymore.
I don't tend to block anyone online unless I feel like they are harassing me. Haven't blocked anyone on Lemmy so far. I think people can be too quick to block others who have different points of view these days.
Haven't blocked anyone on Lemmy. Block people on Twitter when a raging bigot is put on my For You. Block people on Tumblr when a raging bigot shows up in my notes or if I see someone post a reader insert fic.
When a co-worker just endlessly stalks you after staring, and being weird and creepy. I had no mutual friends and she kept showing up as someone I might know.
I've only ever blocked one person, a former friend who hurt me very badly. I doubt they'd ever try to contact me again anyway, but I needed to make sure that bridge stays burned.
Mostly racism, sexism, bad-faith arguments, and some religious stuff. I often double-check a person's post history to make sure I'm not just reading it wrong. I also do so to make sure I'm not blocking someone for a single bad day or bad take.
I think younger me would have argued more or tried to convince them of things by showing evidence, but I just don't have the time or energy at the moment; I have a full-time job, a small farm, and home maintenance on the (used) house I moved into 6 months ago.
My block list on here is only that stupid media bias rating bot so far. If this place gets like reddit with a dozen idiotic bots butting into every conversation while adding nothing of value, they'll get blocked as well.
Speaking more generally, I block my abusive ex on everything.
I blocked two accounts on my instance that kept posting porn without the NSFW tag, as a troll. From the message it was likely the same person who owned both accounts.
A demonstration that the person is not interested in a conversation, they just want to grandstand and use rhetoric tricks to feel like they are superior and are strictly aiming to used the conversation as a way to inflate their sense of self worth at the cost of treating you like a human being.
"No way I am reading all that" on a average sized post while expounding their opinion in an equally lengthy paragraph is usually the same start of the end. These people are generally not actively trolling they are just up their own ass. If they cannot demonstrate basic intellectual mutual respect after having this pointed out to them blocking them is both for best of us.
A particular pet peeve is people who quote every bit of a post in sections to refute it. It's lazy and I have witnessed it from people in my life who are extremely narcissistic. Writing your own brief is respectful. Essentially writing over someone else's entire post with red pen isn't. It's not a block, but it's a contributing factor
If it's someone using very bad faith rhetoric like moving goalposts or extreme cherrypicking - basically any stuff that demonstrates obvious trolling I don't block, I counterpunch. My goal becomes making sure you do not leave the arguement with what you come there for.
All in all I have blocked about 3 people. I believe in second chances so someone has to show no signs of improvement after about an average of 7 replies.