this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Lemmy
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I think that, perhaps, the user is trying to use Lemmy as Reddit, rather than using some of the fantastic quality of life improvements that evaporated with the API nonsense.
For example, blocking users and communities (and soon instances). Some users and communities, even if I enjoy them or the instances that they are on, sometimes are just too toxic for me. And that isn't to say that the comms and users necessarily are (sometimes they are) but, that sometimes engaging with some comms and users either causes undue stress or temptation to get involved in an Internet fight. That's not behavior that is good for us, even if it sometimes feels good in the moment.
I'm hoping (and have suggested) that a "timeout" feature gets added to allow one to readily self-regulate and disengage when they find that interactions are approaching the sorts that are algorithmically encouraged on commercial social media platforms. The outrage machine is just terrible and I've found myself much happier and in a better headspace since leaving such platforms. Added bonus is that transphobia actually gets taken seriously on most instances and, while it doesn't technically impact my as a cis guy, I'm much happier knowing that people are able to feel safer to be themselves (or come to terms with themselves).
As for the complaint about people being more likely pedantic or correct people on technical details, I love that - finding out that I'm wrong about something is fantastic because that means that I learned something. When there's topics, like tech, where there are often correct and incorrect answers and they change or get added to regularly, one really needs to leave the ego at the door. We're all humans (and bots and human facsimiles), which means we'll be wrong from time to time. It's a fact of life, effectively in environments where there are a lot of knowledge-workers and the medium of communication is directly related to the topics.
Personally, I'd like to see more comms regarding to digital circuit design and open-source silicon.
User blocking doesn't work at all.
How so?
The person you blocked can still see, and reply to, everything you say. It only denies you the opportunity to respond, allowing them to discredit you and turn others against you without your knowledge. It also doesn't stop them downvoting you at all, leaving them free to retaliate via vote bombing.
They should be the ones unable to see any comments you make. They should be unable to reply or respond to you. They should be unable to vote on any of your comments or even posts at all.
But it's the opposite, and therefore completely broken.
Unfortunately, if they were to do this I'd imagine they'd be able to know you blocked them - as your instance would need to tell the other instance (and if they were a single user instance they could grab that record from the database) to hide your comments/posts. Which could cause even more problems as there are definitely people who'd go scorched earth over it. Even if they didn't go on a rampage about it, they'd still be able to just then logout and see what you're saying because of that.
From what I recall in the ActivityPub spec, transmitting blocks is already there, but I imagine no one implements it for that reason.
I'd take that over the situation now. At least if they had to resort to bannable offenses to retaliate, they'd actually get banned.
All blocking does now is give them free reign to harass you, which completely defeats the point.
Like if we have to be afraid of vengeful users who want to win something, why have blocking at all then? We might as well just bend over and hope they use lube.