Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
8) No Bots.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
It's pointless blocking people if that means they can still see and reply to you. Why even bother?
You can't see them, that's the point. You block users, comms or instances you don't want to see on your timeline.
You don't get to decide what other people want to see on theirs
Strong agree. If blocking also means they can't see your posts or comment on it, then that becomes primarily a way for trolls to attack and block anyone who disagrees with them
That's not it because it's not about deciding for others, but about deciding for your own posts. I should be able to decide on my visibility.
You have control over your visibility, anything you don't want people to see, you don't put in the internet.
Where do you get this idea?
Where do you get the idea that it is at all possible to stand up on your soapbox in the town square, addressing every Tom, Dick, and Harry, yet keeping certain members of the public from hearing your speech?
When I logout of my instance, you can't distinguish me from any other anonymous user. I'm part of the anonymous masses. If you want to keep me from seeing your content, you can't post it for the anonymous masses to see.
Facebook (and other proprietary, centralized services) give the impression that this can be done, but the way they are doing it is by refusing to show content to anonymous users. You can't do that with federated services.
So those replies won't show up in my inbox of course
But then that's not really blocking, that's just hiding users.
Well idc about the semantics, the fact is it is useful and there is a good reason to use it. Personally I think the "they can't see or reply to you anymore" style of "block" is super toxic and Reddit switching to that model was a major factor in its decline. It is very easily weaponized and basically amounts to giving powerusers moderation powers. If someone who makes a lot of popular posts or top level comments blocks you under that model, that instantly limits your ability to participate, and no one ever gets to know this is happening or to what extent. The most obvious way this gets abused is by commercial spammers trying to monopolize relevant subs by blocking everyone who may call them out or post competing content, but it also shuts down disagreement and debate; if you have something controversial to say and don't want it to look like any good objections exist, you can just silence your best critics. It also gets commonly used by people right after they write an inflammatory reply to ensure they get the last word.
its the same way on reddit, you block them but you could still see thier content, i dont think they can reply to you, but someone else on that comment chain though.
That was a late-stage enshittification; it's only been that way for a few years, and it was primarily used to suppress dissent.
It is absolutely not something we should be porting over to the fediverse.