i do that to, with the 2nd bullet point, sometimes i block people to avoid arguements, even if one of the parties maybe in the wrong.(either you misspoke something or the other guy was misinterpreting) most of the time, i block because they dont argue in good faith.(i almost never report people)
Lemmy communities and irl communities are different things that only sometimes overlap.
For example, the irl trans community could be harassed in a Lemmy gaming community. If mods aren’t sympathetic, then they’re torn between just accepting the harassment, or forking the gaming community. While this is what Lemmy was meant to do, practically most Lemmy communities aren’t large enough to meaningful support more than one instance, so one of the instances is going to wither on the vine. And most Lemmy mods seem overworked, besides.
I’m not sure what you’re suggesting. If a gaming community’s members are harassing a trans community, could the trans community’s moderators not simply ban everyone from that gaming community from the trans community? That’s a power that moderators have. You could also report the gaming community to the administrators of their instance and if the administrators thought it was a problem they could shut down that community. You could also ask your own instance’s administrators to defederate from the gaming community’s instance. All of those things are things that can be done with the way the Fediverse is currently set up.
I said that forking the community to begin with isn’t realistic. There would be no “trans-friendly gaming” community because it wouldn’t have enough members to sustain it. Lemmy is too small to sustain multiple communities for the same topic, for all but the most popular topics. When you see multiple communities for a topic, almost always all but one is a ghost town.
so splitting the community, or defederating aren’t really options
hopefully going to mod, or failing that the admin, would be successful. but mods and admins are criminally overworked already, and lemmy is too small to maintain a healthy mod pool.
I don’t have great technical solutions here, unfortunately.
I’m just trying to explain that what OP wants is reasonable, and everyone here shitting on him is not being reasonable.
I’m just trying to explain that what OP wants is reasonable,
And I maintain that it’s not reasonable. You (and OP) want individual users to be able to control what other individual users can see and do on the Fediverse. They’ve tried that on Reddit. RunawayFixer found this experiment, for example. The results were not good from a pragmatic perspective, let alone a philosophical one.
I think you’re going to have to accept that in a free environment there are going to be people saying things and reading things that you don’t approve of. You can create a community with whatever rules you want to enforce there, but you can’t enforce your rules on other communities. Just as they can’t enforce them on yours.
I’m not trying to enforce rules on other communities.
im not even trying to enforce rules on any community
reddit-style blocking would allow the person to continue to be in that community, they wouldn’t even need to be kicked out.
its crazy that you’re framing personally blocking someone so they cant reply to it as though I’m changing the rules for lemmy communities.
Like, OP wasn’t even saying that blocking someone should hide my content from the person I blocked, just that it should stop them from replying to it. it doesn’t even have to be reddit style, it just has to be more than shutting your eyes and ears and saying “lalalalala”
its crazy that you’re framing personally blocking someone so they cant reply to it as though I’m changing the rules for lemmy communities.
It is, though. By your actions you would change what someone else is able to do, regardless of what community they’re in. By blocking someone you’re creating a new rule on what that someone is allowed to do and see across all of the Fediverse.
That’s the fundamental disagreement here. I don’t think this is acceptable. You can change what you see, and moderators can change who and what is allowed inside their community, but nothing you do should be affecting what someone else can do across all of the Fediverse.
Do those communities not have mods? Oh they do? Report them if they’re breaking the rules then. If they’re not breaking the rules then you just need to harden up.
You need to harden up even if they are breaking the rules though.
I have on occasion unblocked people just to see what was in a thread. I’ve never really been glad that I did so. I blocked them for a reason. I shouldn’t want to engage with their posts. I’m happier and it makes things more calm when I’m not fighting with morons over shit anyone can see is wrong.
What you are asking for is closer to something like being able to personally ban another user from all your own content.
This would be more like if you made all your comments and posts in your own personal community, and then banned a user from it.
This, your suggested paradigm, can also be entirely defeated by someone just… making another account.
Or even: Logging out, and viewing as a guest.
Closer to message board styled systems are not twitter, are not instagram.
If you wanna try to develop something like a ‘private profile’ mode for lemmy, where you would have to grant access to every individual user you wanted to be able to see your posts and comments, good luck, go for it, code’s open source, best I can tell, all dev work on it is unpaid, volunteers.
I am reasonably confident this is basically impossible given how lemmy is architected, but hey, maybe I’m wrong.
I used to agree with you until I actually spoke with people from communities that get regularly harassed.
Muting is great if all you want to do is hide content you don’t like. But if you need to defend yourself against a campaign of harassment, this only gives power to the harassers.
Yes all the have to do is make a new account, but it’s another hurdle they have to cross. Better than no hurdle and also blindfolding yourself
Ok, lets walk though this. You have spoke with people from marginalized communities that get regularly harassed, correct?
Then please explain it to us the way it was explained to you. After all it convinced you about the value in speech control, a very high bar for most rational people to overcome.
But here is the thing, you have not. You have just stated over and over that this is a needed feature to “protect” marginalized groups. You have not even hinted at the group (hell it could be that its some hexbear talking point or that there is no group at all). And no, naming a marginalized group who sees regular harassment is not an issue, unless the group in question’s very existence is offensive. Although there are a lot of nuances between what is and is not offensive, there are still some clear lines (think about say furries being ok vs the man boy love association being not ok).
Also criticism is not harassment, if you feel you are being harassed then use the report button. But don’t get upset if not everyone else agrees with you.
I know, i had a whole discussion about this 2 years ago, which is why I changed my mind about this very topic (I used to be very much "things are public by default, no expectation of privacy in a social network).
but that doesn’t make it good. this is a problem with the design of lemmy IMO. Lemmy is the best popular option we have right now, and unfortunately popularity is important. Lemmy is already a ghost town, i cant imagine moving to an even smaller alternative.
You entirely missed my point, or just disregarded it.
Yep, it ain’t perfect.
… Got any… useful ideas about that?
About how to rework that design?
How we gonna make that happen?
What’s the plan?
Or do we just want to agree that perfect would be better than not perfect?
Talk is cheap, most of it is near totally useless noise, hosting all that talk though, facilitating all that blather, in a functional, much less ideal manner… now that’s complicated and expensive, and lemmy’s budget is basically zero, and all the devs are volunteers.
It’s hard to control which Information other people get in a system where many servers share information like posts and comments. Think of it as throwing your post on a public wall. Everyone that walks by will be able to see it.
It’s (relatively) easy to control what information you want to see. Or at least information from which sources you want to see, or not see.
Since each instance is its own ‘website’ that shares content with each other, your block would need to be publicly available so that every other site can see it and implement it.
That’s mostly true; it’s optimized for wide dissemination of information, and the idea of keeping a specific person from seeing information that’s shown to the rest of the world isn’t very compatible with that. It doesn’t really work on Reddit or web forums that are visible without logging in either since a person you’ve blocked can still view your posts anonymously.
A bit more looking brings me to the ActivityPub spec. Your server should tell the blocked user’s server about the block, and the blocked user’s server shouldn’t allow them to interact with your posts or comments (that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to see your posts or comments).
The thing is, in network protocol documents, should means the behavior is optional. Fediverse software doesn’t have to support blocks at all according to the protocol.
Imagine a hypothetical situation where I have beef with you. I create a second account and block you. I use this account to scout your posts, then using that other account, I go to all of the posts you’re commenting on, and post comments calling you out for being… I don’t know, whatever nasty thing I want to call you out for. Because that account has blocked you, you can’t see those posts (and presumably not the replies to them, either), and can’t defend yourself.
The problem you’ve solved is that they’re not harassing you in your spaces, and your communities.
If they wanna cry about me in their basement with their own friends, that’s ok. But I want to put hurdles, at least some inconveniences, between myself and their ability to harass me in my communities. Force them to manage 30 accounts, etc.
It sounds like what you want is for moderators to ban people for you, which they will do if you report them and the moderators agree that what they are doing is unwanted in the community.
they’re not harassing you in your spaces, and your communities.
They would be, though. That’s exactly what they’re saying could happen - you just wouldn’t be able to see it. In effect, what they described is exactly what you’re claiming to be a problem, except worse because it’s exclusively in control of the harasser.
Go back to Reddit? This system stops witch hunts, effectively stops echo chambers from gaining traction, and helps protect against power tripping mods.
Much like someone else told you, you can control what you see. If you don’t see the trolls do they really exist for you? If you don’t go looking for their “ghost” you won’t find it
Blocking means you can’t see them. It makes them non existent to you. It doesn’t hide you from them. It’s working as intended.
I’d call that “muting” rather than blocking.
And it leaves vulnerable communities open to abuse, because they’re unable to police their communities and kick out harassers.
Moderators are still able to ban people from communities.
Easier job to do when you’re actually getting reports.
i do that to, with the 2nd bullet point, sometimes i block people to avoid arguements, even if one of the parties maybe in the wrong.(either you misspoke something or the other guy was misinterpreting) most of the time, i block because they dont argue in good faith.(i almost never report people)
Lemmy communities and irl communities are different things that only sometimes overlap.
For example, the irl trans community could be harassed in a Lemmy gaming community. If mods aren’t sympathetic, then they’re torn between just accepting the harassment, or forking the gaming community. While this is what Lemmy was meant to do, practically most Lemmy communities aren’t large enough to meaningful support more than one instance, so one of the instances is going to wither on the vine. And most Lemmy mods seem overworked, besides.
I’m not sure what you’re suggesting. If a gaming community’s members are harassing a trans community, could the trans community’s moderators not simply ban everyone from that gaming community from the trans community? That’s a power that moderators have. You could also report the gaming community to the administrators of their instance and if the administrators thought it was a problem they could shut down that community. You could also ask your own instance’s administrators to defederate from the gaming community’s instance. All of those things are things that can be done with the way the Fediverse is currently set up.
all of those are unrealistic options
I said that forking the community to begin with isn’t realistic. There would be no “trans-friendly gaming” community because it wouldn’t have enough members to sustain it. Lemmy is too small to sustain multiple communities for the same topic, for all but the most popular topics. When you see multiple communities for a topic, almost always all but one is a ghost town.
so splitting the community, or defederating aren’t really options
hopefully going to mod, or failing that the admin, would be successful. but mods and admins are criminally overworked already, and lemmy is too small to maintain a healthy mod pool.
I don’t have great technical solutions here, unfortunately.
I’m just trying to explain that what OP wants is reasonable, and everyone here shitting on him is not being reasonable.
And I maintain that it’s not reasonable. You (and OP) want individual users to be able to control what other individual users can see and do on the Fediverse. They’ve tried that on Reddit. RunawayFixer found this experiment, for example. The results were not good from a pragmatic perspective, let alone a philosophical one.
I think you’re going to have to accept that in a free environment there are going to be people saying things and reading things that you don’t approve of. You can create a community with whatever rules you want to enforce there, but you can’t enforce your rules on other communities. Just as they can’t enforce them on yours.
I’m not trying to enforce rules on other communities.
im not even trying to enforce rules on any community
reddit-style blocking would allow the person to continue to be in that community, they wouldn’t even need to be kicked out.
its crazy that you’re framing personally blocking someone so they cant reply to it as though I’m changing the rules for lemmy communities.
Like, OP wasn’t even saying that blocking someone should hide my content from the person I blocked, just that it should stop them from replying to it. it doesn’t even have to be reddit style, it just has to be more than shutting your eyes and ears and saying “lalalalala”
It is, though. By your actions you would change what someone else is able to do, regardless of what community they’re in. By blocking someone you’re creating a new rule on what that someone is allowed to do and see across all of the Fediverse.
That’s the fundamental disagreement here. I don’t think this is acceptable. You can change what you see, and moderators can change who and what is allowed inside their community, but nothing you do should be affecting what someone else can do across all of the Fediverse.
If they are running their own communities yes they can. Mods can and do ban people from the communities.
lemmy communities and irl communities aren’t the same, they only sometimes partially overlap.
Do those communities not have mods? Oh they do? Report them if they’re breaking the rules then. If they’re not breaking the rules then you just need to harden up.
You need to harden up even if they are breaking the rules though.
That’s unfair. It’s rather fair they don’t see me, I blocked them for a reason.
You get to control your own experience, not their experience.
My experience is, I see that there’s a comment, I can’t read it, I can’t upvote or downvote it, and I couldn’t report it, wonderful!
Why would you want to read a comment by someone you’ve blocked, and why would you want to upvote, downvote, or report a comment that you haven’t read?
Ask yourself that question when it’s about time.
I have on occasion unblocked people just to see what was in a thread. I’ve never really been glad that I did so. I blocked them for a reason. I shouldn’t want to engage with their posts. I’m happier and it makes things more calm when I’m not fighting with morons over shit anyone can see is wrong.
What you are asking for is closer to something like being able to personally ban another user from all your own content.
This would be more like if you made all your comments and posts in your own personal community, and then banned a user from it.
This, your suggested paradigm, can also be entirely defeated by someone just… making another account.
Or even: Logging out, and viewing as a guest.
Closer to message board styled systems are not twitter, are not instagram.
If you wanna try to develop something like a ‘private profile’ mode for lemmy, where you would have to grant access to every individual user you wanted to be able to see your posts and comments, good luck, go for it, code’s open source, best I can tell, all dev work on it is unpaid, volunteers.
I am reasonably confident this is basically impossible given how lemmy is architected, but hey, maybe I’m wrong.
I used to agree with you until I actually spoke with people from communities that get regularly harassed.
Muting is great if all you want to do is hide content you don’t like. But if you need to defend yourself against a campaign of harassment, this only gives power to the harassers.
Yes all the have to do is make a new account, but it’s another hurdle they have to cross. Better than no hurdle and also blindfolding yourself
Oh great, this again.
Wtf does that even mean?
Ok, lets walk though this. You have spoke with people from marginalized communities that get regularly harassed, correct?
Then please explain it to us the way it was explained to you. After all it convinced you about the value in speech control, a very high bar for most rational people to overcome.
But here is the thing, you have not. You have just stated over and over that this is a needed feature to “protect” marginalized groups. You have not even hinted at the group (hell it could be that its some hexbear talking point or that there is no group at all). And no, naming a marginalized group who sees regular harassment is not an issue, unless the group in question’s very existence is offensive. Although there are a lot of nuances between what is and is not offensive, there are still some clear lines (think about say furries being ok vs the man boy love association being not ok).
Also criticism is not harassment, if you feel you are being harassed then use the report button. But don’t get upset if not everyone else agrees with you.
I mean…
I am describing a technical reality of how lemmy works.
You can ‘disagree’ with that, but uh, you would just be wrong.
Not in the sense of ‘I do not have enough empathy to consider the plight of a regularly harassed person’.
More in the sense of … ok, then don’t use lemmy, if you don’t like how it works.
Or… make it work the way you want it to work, by actually coding it.
Like, I wasn’t joking when I basically said ‘I am reasonbly confident it is impossible to make lemmy work the way you want it to.’
Thats not my opinion, in a… how should things work in an ideal world, sense of ‘opinion’.
It is my opinion, as a person who understands a bit (certainly not all) about how the code just actually works.
If you can figure it out, I’d be impressed.
Alternatively, if you’d like to pay me $50 an hour to attempt to develop that, I may have some room in my schedule.
I could do it at 48/h, js
Fuck you!
I was first!
rofl
I know, i had a whole discussion about this 2 years ago, which is why I changed my mind about this very topic (I used to be very much "things are public by default, no expectation of privacy in a social network).
but that doesn’t make it good. this is a problem with the design of lemmy IMO. Lemmy is the best popular option we have right now, and unfortunately popularity is important. Lemmy is already a ghost town, i cant imagine moving to an even smaller alternative.
better than reddit, but far from perfect.
You entirely missed my point, or just disregarded it.
Yep, it ain’t perfect.
… Got any… useful ideas about that?
About how to rework that design?
How we gonna make that happen?
What’s the plan?
Or do we just want to agree that perfect would be better than not perfect?
Talk is cheap, most of it is near totally useless noise, hosting all that talk though, facilitating all that blather, in a functional, much less ideal manner… now that’s complicated and expensive, and lemmy’s budget is basically zero, and all the devs are volunteers.
I thought you blocked the person so you wouldn’t have to read what they wrote
The only way to do that in a federated system would be to effectively make blocks public. That has its own disadvantages.
Sorry I’m a nurse, explain it to me like I’m five years old.
It’s hard to control which Information other people get in a system where many servers share information like posts and comments. Think of it as throwing your post on a public wall. Everyone that walks by will be able to see it.
It’s (relatively) easy to control what information you want to see. Or at least information from which sources you want to see, or not see.
Since each instance is its own ‘website’ that shares content with each other, your block would need to be publicly available so that every other site can see it and implement it.
Thanks Final conclusion, no offence: Blocking is rather useless in the Fediverse, unless you submit to complete ignorance.
That’s mostly true; it’s optimized for wide dissemination of information, and the idea of keeping a specific person from seeing information that’s shown to the rest of the world isn’t very compatible with that. It doesn’t really work on Reddit or web forums that are visible without logging in either since a person you’ve blocked can still view your posts anonymously.
A bit more looking brings me to the ActivityPub spec. Your server should tell the blocked user’s server about the block, and the blocked user’s server shouldn’t allow them to interact with your posts or comments (that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to see your posts or comments).
The thing is, in network protocol documents, should means the behavior is optional. Fediverse software doesn’t have to support blocks at all according to the protocol.
Imagine a hypothetical situation where I have beef with you. I create a second account and block you. I use this account to scout your posts, then using that other account, I go to all of the posts you’re commenting on, and post comments calling you out for being… I don’t know, whatever nasty thing I want to call you out for. Because that account has blocked you, you can’t see those posts (and presumably not the replies to them, either), and can’t defend yourself.
What problem have we solved?
The problem you’ve solved is that they’re not harassing you in your spaces, and your communities.
If they wanna cry about me in their basement with their own friends, that’s ok. But I want to put hurdles, at least some inconveniences, between myself and their ability to harass me in my communities. Force them to manage 30 accounts, etc.
It sounds like what you want is for moderators to ban people for you, which they will do if you report them and the moderators agree that what they are doing is unwanted in the community.
They would be, though. That’s exactly what they’re saying could happen - you just wouldn’t be able to see it. In effect, what they described is exactly what you’re claiming to be a problem, except worse because it’s exclusively in control of the harasser.
Well multi accounting is the next problem… Just live an unpeacefull live then…
Multi-accounting is a feature, not a problem. Any “solution” I can think of to it would lead to far worse consequences than whatever you’re imagining.
Go back to Reddit? This system stops witch hunts, effectively stops echo chambers from gaining traction, and helps protect against power tripping mods.
Much like someone else told you, you can control what you see. If you don’t see the trolls do they really exist for you? If you don’t go looking for their “ghost” you won’t find it