why it is a silly suggestion

Once again, just because it is technically unfeasible doesn’t make the idea bad. Just because a system is limited in its ability doesn’t mean that what the user wants isn’t a desirable thing to have. That’s I think the sticking point in this specific thread with you specifically.
People aren’t saying “we can’t do that” they’re saying “that’s a bad idea because we can’t do that”, and there is a pretty significant difference between those.

I guess you’ve never interacted with an actual developer before, who isn’t also their own PR department

Pretty baseless statement, but there is nothing I could say to convince you of my credentials.
It’s not the technical discussion that is anxiety producing, it’s how some of these threads got wildly out of pocket, and I was getting way too emotional and it didn’t feel good. I didn’t open the app for like a week because seeing those waiting notifications of people hurling insults was not was getting me into a bad place. Testy is fine, this was not testy.

I feel that such a ‘Block’ feature is actually morally bad, as it is a form of lying, providing false promises

This is exactly how I feel about the current “block” functionality. Most platforms would call this “mute” or “hide” to indicate that the effect is purely on your side and it has not impacted them at all.
Which is exactly what OP is talking about in this post.

the only way to actually ensure […] if you want to actually guarantee certain people cannot see some or all

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
We don’t even have to use the word “block”. We can use another term to indicate this doesn’t block them from seeing, only from taking action.
And besides, your concern about visibility is already a “problem” on other networks like reddit, and the people asking for this are ok with that. And really, I’m not against the current block (mute), it’s just poorly named and insufficient by itself. It could be combined with a reddit style block.
Maybe you could tap “block” and then be presented with 3 checkboxes: block them from my feed, block them from interacting with my posts, block them from seeing my posts.

Private communities is a whole other topic (which is where I actually became convinced of this, I used to be totally on your side).
This public-only (almost) design is going to exclude people who would be really nice to include. I know that it doesn’t have to be for everyone, but I think it hurts the culture to exclude the groups who would benefit from these privacy and protection functions.

For a long time I’ve been toying with the idea of a public group chat where privacy comes from out of band exchange of private keys and identifying information, but without all the crazy complexity of duplicating each message for each chat member (which, at the time I was thinking about it, is how signal did it. Idk what they do now). But cryptography is not my strength so the design never really left the basics concepts stage. But this is a pretty significant tangent.

Anyways, I’m sure I’m not the first person to suggest this design to the devs, after all as you mentioned, this is more or less what mastodon does. The devs chose not to take action on it. I can still be unhappy about that lol

I lampooned your own words to show you how stupid it sounded, not for you to take it seriously. Holy shit man.

You seem to be against letting people control who says what on their own servers.
It’s not a stretch to imagine you want that enshrined in law.
Forcing someone to keep content available on their own servers by law is forced speech, because refusing to serve content from their own servers is a form of speech (assuming you’re American, because, yanno) (in this case, the forced speech was deemed legal, but still forced speech).

You’re saying you’re not just for the freedom of speech (government cannot silence you) you’re anti-censorship (nobody can silence you), which means nothing without the ability to protect it.

1984 got the characters and the setting, but not the plot. WTF weirding modules?!?!

2000 got the plot, but not the characters or setting. Why is Paul a spoiled little crybaby? Why is Mortal Kombat happening in a desert temple?

I prefer the 1984 because although it absolutely demolished the plot, between the acting, set designs, costume, and directing, it still salvaged an entertaining movie.
2000 miniseries just had me screaming at the characters in between scoffing at the atrocious costumes and direction.

◴_◠◷

I needed to step away for a week because this comment section was giving me anxiety.

I know we both agreed the system is not perfect.
I haven’t come up with a solution
and you refuse to acknowledge that treating OP like dog shit isn’t an appropriate reaction for a non-technical user complaining about the confusion behaviour of a poorly named feature.\

I came into this conversation because people kept mocking OP. I’ve been pulled off on tangents fighting about stupid shit because I can’t keep my eye on the ball worth shit, but that’s basically it. People are dragging OP for daring point out that the way “block” works here is confusing and feels bad to use.
Even if it cannot be implemented, it is not unreasonable for a user to request it.

I also absolutely refuse to acknowledge that blocking is antithetical to decentralized systems. Just because it’s not possible with the current design of activity pub doesn’t mean that it’s not possible in other decentralized systems. I’m not looking for perfection, I’m looking for improvement.

Here:
In mastodon, if Alice from instance A follows Bob from instance B, then instance B will send Bob’s posts to A. In addition to that, when B sends Bob’s posts to A, it can also send new block requests.
These block requests are public, and it is up to the subscribing instance to honor them, but it’s most of the way there, and instance admins can choose to defederate with instances that don’t honor it (like they already do with malicious instances).
Lemmy isn’t mastodon, but it still uses activitypub, so decentralization isn’t the limiting factor here.
With Lemmy it’s actually more enforceable, since content in a community is owned by the instance hosting that community. If Charlie is on instance C, and tries to reply to Bob’s post on instance A, instance A could have subscribed to Bob’s blocklist, and will reject Charlie’s reply because it’s in reply to Bob’s post. On Lemmy it doesn’t even matter if Charlie’s instance is malicious or not, as long as A isn’t.
Malicious is the wrong word, but I think you get the idea.

Is that going clockwise or counterclockwise?

You’re right, that was a different conversation. And I’m not part of that group so I can’t say for sure.

What I’m trying to do is take what I learned there and extrapolate it. I think there is some overlap.
At the very least, I don’t think OP deserves to be dragged like they were for what is to me a pretty reasonable take. In Lemmy, blocking someone acts like getting blocked on pretty much every platform, which is going to be confusing for many

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?

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.

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.

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.

The implementation serves the application, not the other way around.

Lemmy would still be Lemmy, if overnight all insurances miraculously switched to a different protocol that provides the same functionality.

To say that it’s too difficult to implement is fair. I’d argue that this being so difficult would indicate a fundamental design flaw, rather than a user making an unreasonable request. Maybe a flaw was part of an intentional tradeoff, but that doesn’t make it less of a flaw.

An I going to personally redesign activitypub? No.
I tried to read the spec and i disliked it enough to stop before I got very far into it. But although I dislike the spec, I like the apps people built on it. For the most part.
And I strongly disagree with the sentiment that feedback is only useful if it provides solutions. I dont think that it is bad for OP to point out that this is confusing and seemingly punitive to the blocker, even without offering to fix it themselves.

But that’s the right off the mod and the admin to express themselves through blocking and defederation. It sounds like you’re supporting compelled speech

I’m sorry for the way I spoke

We’re missing the point here though. People are dragging op through shit for wanting a totally reasonable thing to want.

Maybe Lemmy isn’t going to provide it, but they don’t deserve to be treated like this for just bringing up something that is pretty clearly confusing to people who dgaf about the underlying protocols

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

I struggle to believe that someone who writes English as well as you, and is familiar with the subject can misread what I’ve written so grossly, except by intention.

using someone’s preferred pronouns doesn’t harm anyone.

This post is about being made to use someone’s preferred pronouns. The context of this whole discussion is the usage of preferred pronouns. The pronouns being discussed are preferred pronouns. The harm being discussed is harm (or lack thereof) in using them.

RIP to the Mediterranean

Or alternatively, everyone gets a little bit of Mediterranean food

anymore than English or History is

It’ll be the same for them too.
Nobody appreciates learning for the sake of learning anymore, learning is strictly for getting jobs. Although if you have the money to spend on getting many degrees worrying about paying off loans, then there may be another aspect to the resentment, considering the cost of university these days

Depends on the animal and the time of year.

Is it a large animal with young? Is it a territorial animal in rutting season? Do I have smelly food on me?

For the most part you can take precautions that prevent dangerous animals (in these parts) from getting close, so if they ignored those precautions then there is another factor involved and yes I’m scared. Moose, large cats, bears, wolves, etc.
Some other animals can communicate disease, so I’m scared of them if they get into my tent or something.
But other than that, mainly not afraid, or I at least recognize the fear as irrational.

Thankfully around here all the dangerous animals mostly want to stay away (no polar bears or cougars), and are easy to see (no venomous snakes, spiders, or, again, cougars)
I’m still scared of accidentally getting between a momma bear and a cub or something, though.