I block freely. My time and attention and mental and emotional bandwidth are limited resources, and to the extent possible I intend to spend them carefully.

I wish there was a hide posts option, rather than a flat out block. There are some overly prolific posters that i would like to block, but their comments are not an issue, just the 40 rapid fire posts they make everyday.

More people need to make use of the curation tools available to them in my opinion. Too often I see people browsing /all and then complain about seeing tons of stuff that they don't like. There are tools that are available to them to help them create a more pleasant experience that they just aren't using. The fediverse doesn't have some algorithm that learns the type of content that you most often engage with and feed it to you, you have to more proactively do the curation yourself.

Just as an example, I was in a conversation with one of the lemmy.world admins a while back. We were talking about instance blocks and how infrequently users actually use them. Across all of the users on lemmy.world, only about 700 of them actually created an instance block for the most-blocked instance (lemmynsfw). Only two instances had more than 500 users block it.

It's great for your mental state.

Just be aware of any filter bubble you might create. If you block every person that has an opposite perspective, you'll fall into your own echo chamber.

Blocking is great. I truly wish more people would block. We would be able to all have a more enjoyable experience.

Only disappointing thing is they can still see and respond to my posts, just that I can't see it. I wish they couldn't see anything I posted either.

I understand. Lemmy users are divided on that issue because not only can these people see, comment and downvote your post, they can manipulate the situation to their advantage (feel free to use your imagination or search posts about blocking).

FWIW, I hear you loud and clear. Please understand that there are plenty of people in this world who are angry, unfulfilled and can’t/won’t touch grass whose only gratification is to try to make other people miserable. This mental instability coupled with current events is unfortunately unleashed here in Lemmy and you.

Block away and save your sanity. I’m here for the jokes and your memes. If I want to argue, I’ll go to work and get paid. Sadly, you are a volunteer and many people don’t realize that — they seem to think that it’s your job to take their crap. For that, I am truly sorry.

Two of my friends recently blocked .world and had good experiences with users from other instances. Recently, there was negativity in Uplifting News that had to be addressed; a .world mod left because they were burned out; some more drama recurring also at .world instance.

Please take good care of yourself and don’t take &#!+ from any of us!

People who I notice just dont get jokes and are in 20 different meme communities being all serious? Blocked.

Been doing this with a warning system. I tag shitty people and block them if I see a person who is tagged acting shitty.

2 years in, no regrets.

I do wish Lemmy would fix the blocking system though. If someone who I've blocked responds to me, I don't see it. Fair enough, but I also don't see what people who respond to that say. I feel like it should just show the username as [blocked] and the content as [hidden] with an option for me to show that content/username, while keeping the rest of the child content fully visible.

I block pretty freely, on all social media. Being both trans and religious means that people on any part of the political spectrum might think I'm subhuman, and I don't see the point of engaging when that's the case.

What are your blocking habits?

I made it through nearly two years and eventually caved after I made the mistake of arguing in favor of the truth, supported by video evidence and a fact check from an internationally recognized fact-checking organization only to be told to "fuck off", a second user said that they enjoyed pissing on my shoe(s) in their personal fight against truth, and some other catastrophically braindead takes. I generally don't like the blocking approach for opinions I don't agree with because everyone has differing views and also people have bad days and that's just life. However, being actively hostile to the truth and being extremely confrontational about it was a bridge too far for me and it was either blocking a few mouldy potatoes in an attempt to keep things tolerable or getting off the threadi/fediverse so I decided to give the former a whirl.

If you do block a lot of people, has that affected your experience?

Thankfully haven't felt the need to block many, so the only thing I've really noticed is that occasionally one of the blocked users comments in the thread for something I've submitted (which I don't get a notification for and can't see) - but then someone unrelated replies to them and then I get a notification for a comment chain which I can't actually load. It took me a while to even figure out why I was getting these "ghost" notifications.

Keep it up. Don't let FOMO loosen your standards. If people acted like this to you in person, you would avoid them. Do it online as well.

Sadly we interact so much online that the bad behavior of social media is now informing people how to behave IRL.

I have gone through phases of blocking very vocal idiots, but then as you said I feel at an informational disadvantage.

I've gotten recently into tagging people with descriptions of repeated behavior. That way I still know what's going on, but I know what to expect from them.

I only block communities for now. And my instance blocks a lot of ... debate heavy instances.

Regarding blocking of individuals: feel free to do that, if it helps you having a better time, that is perfectly fine.

But I started tagging strange people if I think that something they said is not correct. Then later I randomly see them somewhere else behaving normally. So my current plan is tag them first to see if I find this one person repulsive again and if so then block them. This way it is less carpet bombing and I accept that everybody can have a bad day where they lash out.

I have been working in IT for too long. First thought upon reading the title was you were obstructing someone’s work.

Only disappointing thing is they can still see and respond to my posts, just that I can't see it. I wish they couldn't see anything I posted either.

I've seen this view in discussions of blocking before and it really bugs me. You're desiring to unilaterally control what I can see and do on the Fediverse.

This is how it works on Reddit and it's a terrible mechanism. It means you can preemptively ensure that anyone who might refute misinformation will be excluded from your threads before you post them. It means you can step into a conversation I'm having with someone, derail it, and then prevent me from responding to your derail. Over on Reddit by far the most common use I see of the block tool is to get the "last word" in on whatever argument is going on, posting some sort of seemingly clever comeback and then instantly blocking me before I can point out the flaws.

For anyone wondering how the blocking feature has been weaponized to spread misinformation, in 2022 a redditor did an experiment: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/sdcsx3/testing_reddits_new_block_feature_and_its_effects/

Echo chamber time

I have similar blocking habits. People who will not be enriching my life tend to announce themselves with brain-dead comments, hostility, or starting arguments just for the sake of arguing. I don't hesitate to block people like that.

I just tag the worst assholes and then simply not engage next time.

I've gotten more aggressive with blocks lately. Feels like there's been a lot more arguing and drama on here lately than usual, and I haven't been on as much because of it. Blocking at least drowns a lot of that out.

I have blocked hundreds of communities to sanitise my ‘all’ feed, and a few foreign language instances. But only a handful of obnoxious users. The users I’m inclined to block often end up banned anyway

I think the ability or willingness to have a decent conversation with people who have a different opinion is important for the advancement of ideas and a cornerstone of what we call civilization. I find it so weird to see how people "debate" these days instead of conversing, it's somehow more about winning than finding the truth of a matter. Watch for example how political discourse has changed over the last few decades, compare discussions from the 70s like Chomsky vs Foucault to the circus of today. People are already largely separated in different platforms, blocking only exacerbates the bubble effect. That being said, to each their own and I hope your life is better for it.

I'm more on mastodon and their filter system is so nice

I made a filter for "idiot did a thing" and every time the news has another article about how some idiot whose name is on my list did something again, as they do, because that's all they've been doing for 20 years, I no longer have to read it.

But I still get the little "something was blocked, click here to read it" thing, so it's very satisfying.

I don't block often, but I would expect it's a similar upgrade.

I am fast and loose with blocking on all platforms. No regrets.

It's often not even personal. Sometimes someone expresses a mild dislike of cats and I'm like "don't need your noise".

Repost a hilarious meme that I whole heatedly agree with, but with the word "fuck" poorly crossed out? "Algo-speak promoting motherfuckers", roll of the dice on my mood, probably blocked.

My Guild Wars 2 ignore list is full of people labeled "says boiz too much", "annoying fashion", "made bad joke about bees".

There are so many people on the Internet, it's fine. I've taken this approach since MUDs were in fashion and I am pretty confident that it's only served to improve my online experiences.

I block people who are dishonest or abrasive. I'm here for entertainment, not for any higher purpose. I'm not obligated to give those people any attention and I have nothing to gain by it.

I'm blocking maybe a dozen across all of Lemmy. Things are much more pleasant.

Personally if I find someone very unagreeable I will check their account to see if this is their whole online personality or just one or two posts, everyone has bad days. If it seems like a a person I would rather avoid altogether I will block.

I block individuals pretty freely, and it generally improves my experience online.

The reason I block is because I've lived through bullies and a shitty family, and I am familiar with the techniques bad people use to eat up my time/overwhelm me.

These days, I am also secure in myself and my emotional responses in such a way that I no longer feel bad or guilty (as I was conditioned to growing up) when I remove these people from my life. They are not owed my time or eyeballs.

I figure that if they behave in such a way that other people (such as me) decide it's better to remove them from their life and block them--that's their fault, not mine.

I also know my intellect well enough to understand that I'm not losing something irreplaceable intellectually if I block. I actually am better at learning and improving myself in a form that is NOT debate, or live, or putting pressure on me in the moment, because stepping away from the immediacy of something gives me the tools and breathing room to actually think.

So folks yapping and fretting about echo chambers forming if you block and curate your experience is weird to me...even pre-internet I went out of my way to learn new things. If you're in an echo chamber, you chose to be there, it doesn't happen on its own. And blocking asshats won't magically put you in an echo chamber unless you've chosen to be in one already.

Live debate with unpleasant people who often in this day and age have ulterior motives, including a desire to provoke an emotional response that will hinder one's thinking ability, is a technique used to manipulate others. By blocking and opting out of such things online, I can keep my temper more easily and use my brain instead.

So yeah. I block freely, whenever I feel like, and I've stopped feeling bad about it because I have quite a bit of experience on the internet now, and have seen the patterns in which people engage, and a handy block button is basically the only effective tool to manage it with.

I also block communities, but that's mostly just so I can browse Lemmy in public without looking like a degenerate with all the porn subs hanging out in the open.

I'm using Boost, so I've been using tagging a lot. It's useful to remind yourself whether someone routinely behaves in a way that you don't want to interact with.

I've probably untagged more people than I've blocked at this point. People are complicated, moods change with the weather.

Also helped me to correlate that the majority of my tags were on ml users. I've filtered that instance and, can't lie, using Lemmy is much nicer now.

I recommend a client that allows tags instead. I only block really toxic accounts.

trolls just get a label and they're usually at the bottom of most threads anyway.

I blocked like that on reddit but here there's fewer users so I have a higher block threshold.

Plus I want to give people credit for choosing to be on the fediverse - that earns almost everyone a "well maybe you just had a bad day".

I'd say there could be two styles:

• In one, you want to see the "real" unfiltered Internet, or try to not wrap yourself in information bubbles.
• In another, you make your Internet space more welcoming and inspiring.

Both have their merits, with the first improving your grip on real state of affairs, and the other stimulating you to be productive and positive, and being on the Internet as a place to enjoy life.

Personally, I go with the first, since I'm very concerned about how societal attitudes shift in the world. Granted, Lemmy itself is a bit of an echo chamber, but this is not the only place I hang around.

You’ve no obligation to socialize with everyone in real life, why should online be any different?

If someone is consistently annoying, rude or spouting noxious stuff, you’re perfectly reasonable in blocking them.

Interaction in written text online is still a fairly unnatural way for humans to communicate. It’s missing the depth that physical and aural clues provide.

Add to that the evidence that humans can’t really manage more than about 50 relationships makes these global forums too much for a person to really handle.

Block away. Trim your interactions to a manageable level.

I personally do not block. I have always hoped to see changes of heart in people I disagree with, and I also have been on much more abrasive communities, lemmy is kept relatively tidy (at least from my instance's point of view).

Im a big block proponent although I don't block all that many people. I usually give people enough rope to hang themselves as the old saying goes. That being said I think people need to treat internet media like real life. Do you go to bars you hate or hang around annoying people? Likely not. This whole your going to be stuck in a bubble is sorta bs. Hang with who you want to and avoid you like. Thats just life.

I mainly block accounts that seem like they have an agenda. Usually new accounts they post a lot about one very controversial topic. Likewise, I block accounts that are concern trolling or arguing in bad faith. There are so many bots and bad faith actors on the internet I feel like you should be blocking them because they don’t deserve our attention.

@SnokenKeekaGuard I block mercilessly. If I stumble across a single poster or post that even mildly annoys me or gives off bad vibes? Or general asshole behaviour? Instant block.

Block mercilessly. You don't owe anyone any explanations. Your timeline, your rules. (Plus it's therapeutic too.)

blocked

Kidding. I block BS and mean ness. If someone can express their point and let me express mine, I'm good. It's when people start insulting others to get their point out I just don't resonate with them and don't see a point of ever talking to them again.

Not many people get blocked, but blocking communities is great

My blocked list on nextdoor is starting to max out. Have to block all the nazi's that live around me as they are a lost cause and just repeat constant propaganda.

My lemmy block list is zero and hope it will remain that way for a while. It's fairly tame discussions here and no real issues so far.

I block bad writers. It hurts my brain reading their work and I get sad.

Haven't felt the need to block anyone but it's nice to have the functionality

Blocking people is good mental health practice.

Every month or so I go through and lurge my blocklist of all bht the most aggregious posters.

I've never really felt the need to block anyone (except the odd spam bot but I don't think that counts). I think that might be because I pretty much exclusively browse my subscribed feed which means I basically only see posts that interest me, and I find any bad comments are usually heavily downvoted anyway. And its rare enough that I just ignore it.

You should become adblocker...

On Lemmy I usually block communities, if they are a drag in any way, like too negative, too weird, too much discussion of violence, etc. Didn't have to block individuals that much, but in smaller communities it's sometimes just an individual that makes it a drag, while most users post more pleasant things.

I block people who are clearly trolls and that one moron who signed all their posts with an anti-ai signature that does nothing because it was either that or get banned by the mods on .world because “I’m harassing them”.

It's better to hurt old people's feelings than allow them to continue to debase themselves with the false belief that they're competent.

It's possible to have a readily applicable standard for polite interactions when we're not divided by fascist rhetoric.

The way feminists relate to men's issues is often founded in a universalizing noxious ideology of feminism. Men shouldn't be feminists, they should be allies.

What I'm trying to say is: blocking isn't the reason that our politics have entered into toxic polarization, fascism is the reason for that. There's nothing really wrong with blocking.

I generally just tag users, I've blocked a few though

i'm a shithead whose opinions can change after a good exchange tho 🥺🥺

Still rare, only trolls. If someone is judgy or confrontational I’ll move on. It’s only if they’re trying to start a fight, trying to create an ongoing argument that I’ll block them.

I haven't blocked anyone here, but on Tumblr I started unfollowing folks who posted about doom and gloom all the time. That site's more conducive to memes and TV show discussions than it is discussion about news/politics, and I don't like scrolling through a bunch of superhero memes and then getting hit with a post about the latest atrocity in the world. That stuffs important, but it's not healthy to fixate on it all the time.

It's important to curate what you're doing so that you dont fall into a doomscrolling trap or get ragebaited into arguments that go nowhere.

I've become massively hardened to online discourse. I don't need to block users when I can just ignore and not need to get the last word in. I know this is an incredibly rare ability, but I just wanted to entertain the idea here that there are alternatives.

The exception could be for discoverability. If garbage trolling spam overwhelms your front page, then it'll be too time consuming to wade through it.. So blocking entire communities makes a lot of sense in this case.

I don't ever want people I blocked to not be able to see my stuff when the account is public. It's just a weird limitation and gives a false sense of security. Though not being able to directly reply to things would be nice.

I don't block unless it's excessive spam. Informational disadvantage, yadda yadda.

I just exercise the same muscle I use to restrain myself from responding to bait on modern day Reddit, since my account there is still active but not posting (yes, even lurking is technically contribution, but there's too much useful information there for me to justify completely cutting it out).

And for the record, I disagree with block features removing posts from the user on the other end. Public information -> only I get to decide what I do and don't see. Private information -> only I get to decide what I do and don't share. A bit idealistic, but we're talking about a web forum here.

I block only when I see a user who is unhinged enough and is obviously not getting banned by moderators. Usually theses people can be baited into making terrible arguments terrible opinions backed by either terrible ideology or lies, and mods can deal with them.

I think reporting users is more effective to not let the whole site become completely unusable by attracting shitheads/trolls/agitators who even if blocked keep posting garbage because that might be seen by new users.

Also responding to them is taxing on some people's mental health, so this isint for everyone and I get why people might opt for it. I prefer arguing since there is a chance that they might be misinformed or hot headed (me included).

Honestly it depends on how you want to engage with a platform.

I use the Boost app, so I just tag users who are being annoying. I only rarely block someone.

I find that kind of behaviour near ubiquitous but odd.

I have the cats /c blocked becase of the enviormental devesatioan cats do (including killing dolphins with toxoplasmosis) and it saddems me to see people extolling that but that's it as afar as blocking goes here.

On Mastodon the only people I've blocked are the tediously boring, often it's people who I agree with but they seem unable to use any joined up thinking and labour over a particular issue endlessly.

I think thats perhas becase I consider my own opinions way outside the norm and am prelared to listen to others, just in case.

i do the same you are not alone. besides nazis, PROPaganda, or conservatives. condescending, passive aggressive, or "actually this is or that is wrong, and why you should do this or that to be better" i will block them too. or try to correct you on what they believe his "historically correct of a mythos", like an example couple weeks ago i was commenting on the nature of a specific "angel" and someone said actually i dont believe your interpretarion is corrects, its not to my view of the angel mythos, i dont want to know which one of your opinion is correct on a fabricated being. i regurlarly did this on reddit, it has saved me from getting into reportable arguements from time to time. confrontational and judgemental are also up on my list of blocks.

I block any hexbear and .ml

People over use blocking like crazy.

I constantly see people blocking others just for making a point they disagree with. Rather than actually think through the logic and reasoning of what the other person is saying they go 'oh I have no counter point to that, that must mean that you're arguing in bad faith, blocked'.

The internet is already an inherent filter bubble, you don't need to accelerate that. Most people would benefit from spending more time deeply considering that they might be wrong in ways they can't fully comprehend, then they would blocking people who fervently disagree with them.

I block reposters. I don't understand people that post the same link to 3+ communities.

Cool, block me too

The electronic machine you’re operating, and the electrons flowing through it that illuminate the screen constitute a highly ordered abstraction that your human brain interprets to have meaning. The software implementing that abstraction has been structured with paradigms developed over decades with functionality specifically created for you to manage the information displayed to you. Such is the power of these technologies that they are widely regarded to have culminated in a digital information age of revolution. One of the defining moments of that age is the point at which the software, which previously was designed to implement the will and preferences of the user, began changing to instead serve the developer. It could be said that the fundamental philosophy of social media software has become to optimize it such that the user continues to use it while still freely feeding it information and being subject to manipulation.

The abstraction has become hostile, and the tools to manage the information displayed are quickly disappearing as the implementation is abstracted away. The ability to block mimetically harmful information is being designed out of software - exposure to advertising, propaganda, violent or disturbing content, and even the addictive abstractions themselves, have become requirements for use. The filtering and management of information through the hardware and software that you OWN is not just a feature, it is a RIGHT that must be intrinsic to its design.

In my view, the use of blocking technology should not be considered a human social action with emotional weight, but rather a mechanical one like switching off a light or moving an object out of the way. They are information management tools built to serve YOU, the user. If the technology you are using does not serve you, then who are you serving?

You just had a birthday didn’t you? Turned 40? Grumpy old man…

Yeah no wonder your name can be rearranged into "dangerous KKKaren"