Ask Lemmy
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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.
But isn't the whole argument "that didn't work on Reddit"? I see a lot of people saying that reddit style blocking created echo chambers because they'd simply block people they were taking about so they couldn't defend themselves, but where were the mods there?
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?
Because they can spread lies about me that I can't see, to people who come to engage with me.
Not everyone is a stranger, you can have communities for real world groups.
They can spread lies about you to those same people anyway. People who are just bad actors specifically ought to be banned from the community as a whole ideally. In reality not all bad behavior will rise to the level of banning and you will sometimes have to engage with people who are negative towards you if you want to counter their narrative.
Right, not all bad behavior rises to the level of banning. That's why I want to block. It's less than banning, but still let's me keep my own yard clear.
It's like... I'd rather people burn me in effigy down the street, rather than in my front yard, when I have guests over. I cant stop them, but can I at least make them do it away from me and my guests? We don't have to kick them out of the neighborhood or send them to prison, just let me kick them off my front yard.
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.
To use a bit of hyperbole and a physical metaphor:
I can let them burn my effigy in my front yard, or I can force them to go burn it in their own neighborhood.
They're still burning the effigy and littering, but at least it's not outside my front door, scaring away all the people who come to visit me.
But they’re not being harassed because they can’t see it…..
thats not the entire extent of harassment. harassment extends far beyond insulting someone to their face.
You can’t stop other people from badmouthing you behind your back. That’s just life. Accept it and move on. Trying to censor people because you don’t like what they’re saying is peak liberal fascism.
here, let me link you to the paradox of tolerance, you absolute mudcake.
try learning something.
The paradox of tolerance doesn't mean what you think it means.
The "paradox" is fully resolved if you have strong guarantees for the tolerance you care about: fundamental freedoms and equality, and punishments for those who attempt to subvert them. So you don't "tolerate" people who are in the process of dismantling that tolerance by advocating for or engaging directly in harassment of trans people (for example) but you also don't punish people who, for example, are opposed to trans women participating in womens' sports - because while equal participation ought to be a guaranteed matter of equality, we've also broadly agreed as a society that sports ought to be split, and the precise nature of that split is not a guaranteed matter of equality.
Applying this to Lemmy, there is no risk to tolerance in allowing a discussion about sex, gender and sports. There is a risk to tolerance in allowing a "discussion" in which trans people are generally disparaged on the basis of their transition, because it can lead to actions which go beyond mere speech.
To look at this another way, rather than linking a wikipedia page with a dumb insult and saying "try learning something", you'd be better off identifying the behaviour you don't want to see, what action you want to take about it, and why it's justified based on the consequences of not taking that action. "Tolerance" and "intolerance" are vague terms, so have a more productive discussion by being precise.
The "you care about" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
And while you're right, the guy is just a edgelord. Providing him with a nuanced and detailed take wasn't going to do anything.
lol ah the classic crybaby wannabe-fascist "paradox of tolerance" garbage. Just admit it, you can't handle people who have different beliefs and opinions to your own because you can't defend your own with any intelligence.
Classic leftist.
Ah, the actual fascist "nobody deserves to be safe" garbage. Just adjust it, you want to use your own personal freedoms as a cludge to undermine the rights of others.
Classic libertarian
Everybody deserves to be safe. What are you talking about? Someone badmouthing you behind your back doesn't make you "unsafe". Despite what you might try to pretend, words are NOT violence.
How? What am I saying that even remotely hints at anything like this?
I lampooned your own words to show you how stupid it sounded, not for you to take it seriously. Holy shit man.
No, you made yourself look stupid by saying stupid things that made no sense. What I said is perfectly clear and makes sense.