I know we can just purge the notifications but I want to see responses more so from people I haven’t blocked than those I’ve blocked. I don’t want to know nor care about who I’ve blocked has to say to anything I’ve said towards them.
Why can’t we just block and their responses not be seen or giving them the inability to still reply to us?
I think when it comes to blocking, the best approach is when a blocked user is still able to reply but those are hidden from the person that blocked them. While this does basically lead to “harrassment behind their back,” it also prevents users from stifling conversation intentionally by preventing those users from blocking others that may disagree with them so that there is no real discussion or conversation on a comment or topic.
Its a shiniest of two turds option, as the ideal situation is that everyone can be nice and not nasty when someone has a different opinion, thus a block feature not needing to exist. But since we can’t be having any “wrongthink,” (whatever that may mean to each user is different) and anonymity brings out the worst in people, a block feature the way it currently works is necessary.
One annoying feature is that all replies to a blocked user are also automatically hidden regardless of if those people are blocked or not, which I wish wouldn’t happen. Even if the client loaded a dummy comment in place of a blocked user it would be better IMO.
But at the end of the day, there is not really anything anyone can do to prevent other people from reading or interacting with your Lemmy account. They can just not log in, or they can create a new account. They could even create a whole new instance just to keep making accounts. Its like playing whackamole, you just hope the ones you block dont go that far.
Maybe make blocking a public thing, so when you respond to someone you get a warning “this user has blocked you, they will not see your reply” and then show to others that a comment is responding to someone that blocked them? This may help prevent a lot of confusion. Though I see the increased risk of harassment that comes with it… I guess you really can’t win this
I remember on Reddit, during the height of astroturfing and such during the pandemic, people would post stupid shit and block anyone who called them out for spreading misinformation.
At first I thought it was just people who had stupid ideas and didn’t want to change their minds, until I started seeing some of them saying things like “You know I’m right, which is why you won’t reply to this”…and the original commenter would never see it.
It was an effective tool for people who wanted to try to control narratives or otherwise spread misinformation.
Which is how I THOUGHT Lemmy would be when I signed up. It’s definitely not that way. I still love Lemmy, but oy, the user base here do not like opinions that go against the norm/majority. They seek revenge. Follow you around to downvote comments, etc. It’s crazy.
This is unfortunately very true in my experience as well. In my opinion it is actually worse than when I was on Reddit. Nothing can be done about it, sadly.