this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
498 points (87.5% liked)
Technology
60110 readers
3526 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I can imagine people feeling safer, when they are able to block someone stalking them. When you mute a user, this user still can see your profile, your posts and simply knows that you are there, active, posting. On the other hand, when you block another user, you don't exist for this user. I don't remember if a blocked user sees a "you're blocked" message or if your account vanishes completely when the blocked user is logged in.
I guess people who have the habit of harassing other people on social media often have multiple accounts. The feeling of safety when blocking such an account is certainly real but if someone really wants to stalk you he can. Instagram tries to solve this problem by having the option 'block this and all associated accounts'.
I feel like it could be considered dangerous for some people. For someone who faces harassment regularly, taking away the option to block people means making them choose between a) dealing with constant online harassment, or b) leaving the only online community you know. At the very least, this change will be severely detrimental to some folks' mental health, while providing absolutely no benefit to anyone.
It could also be a public safety risk because twitter is a place where many people get news about natural disasters and severe weather. The people who are forced off of the platform because of this change will lose a valuable aggregate of information, and when it gets removed from app stores for violating their TOS (they require that social media services allow blocking), even more people will be without that information.
You never saw how many toxic people are over there? Once they brigade on a target they can easily push someone to suicide