The “Readers added context” feature is the only good thing about Twitter.

  • I’m confused. Isn’t “block” on the fediverse essentially the same as mute on Twitter? Don’t get me wrong, I dislike Elon as much as the next sane person does and I do like the idea of block as it’s implemented on Twitter vs fediverse, but I also understand why it’s not possible on the fediverse. So I’m kind of just asking, isn’t it kind of shooting ourselves in the foot to argue against him on this point? He can easily turn around and just say it’s the same way as the fediverse. And I feel like it’s even worse when we use the fediverse to make these accusations. It makes us look either stupid or hypocritical. I guess there’s a small sliver of hope in the argument “you should implement the best block the technology allows” but that seems a lot more nuanced then many people will listen to.

    • As far as I’m aware “mute” means the other person can still see your profile and comments and they can still reply to those comments - they just won’t show on your feed or in your messages. This is absolutely useless if you’ve been threatened or stalked by someone.

      “Block” means the other person can’t see your profile or any of your comments and you can’t see theirs. Lemmy has “block” for users and “ban” for admins and moderators. I wasn’t aware that Lemmy has “mute” but I’m not an expert.

      • Block on Lemmy doesn’t prevent the blocked person from seeing your posts.

        Edit: which is the crux of comparing mute on Twitter to block on Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon etc.

        Even defederating doesn’t stop them from seeing your posts. It just means you don’t collect theirs.

        • Are you sure? I haven’t blocked anyone on this account because the admins told me if I do I can’t see that person’s comments in the communities I moderate… which rather interferes with moderating.

          Can you block me for a bit so I can try it? Can you even block a moderator? You probably shouldn’t be able to do that within the community they moderate because that completely defeats the object.

          • You’re kind of proving my point. If you block me, it just means you can’t see me.

            Edit: the “problem” with blocking on the fediverse is that the concept of block needs to be implemented server side, not client side. So every instance would need to implement it meaning everything you post would have to carry the information of who you block. It’s how publishing works in ActivityPub. There’s no way for another instance to know that you blocked XYZ so how would they know not to show you that post? Also in regards to defederating, publishing is basically a fancy RSS feed. Anyone can read it, even just you if you view that port. So it’s kind of just blindly shooting it out into the world. Defederating means you explicitly don’t read certain RSS feeds but you can’t stop them from reading yours. You could networkly block someone, but that’s on a different layer of communication beyond the web application’s capabilities.

            • I wasn’t arguing against your point, I just asked if you were sure because I didn’t have any experience of it. If you shut down genuine discussions and questions with “you’re proving my point” you prevent people from growing and learning. But whatever, have a nice day.

              • ~~Dude, we’ve had discussions before and I’m all for you going somewhere else and suddenly complaining about how you had a bad time with me not providing you a genuine discussion, but when your whole comment reiterates my point, what are you expecting to happen? You just described that you were told XYZ happens and that’s exactly what I said would happen.

                Its becoming pretty fucking clear from my interactions with you that you don’t understand honest discussions.~~

                Edit: I realized a few minutes after posting it was another mod with a similar name. Came back to correct it. I got ahead of myself.

                The rest of it still stands though. The behavior you were told would occur is the exact behavior I’m describing.

                  • I confused them with another mod named “someone” who had made a prejudiced comment, got banned, and then complained that no one would have an honest discussion instead of banning first. It was relatively recent so it was still in my head, but not recent enough that I remembered the full name correctly.

                    That being said, being asked to to replicate a behavior that I already predicted literally would prove my point. Like, they were actually asking me to do something that they were told would produce the exact behavior I described. I honestly don’t know how else to phrase “that would prove my point.” It wasn’t being flippant. It was being literal.

                • I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about, but I do know you’re becoming aggressive and not only is that completely unwarranted, it’s against the rules of this community. I think it’s best we don’t interact with each other at all, outside of moderating.

                  • I will admit, it’d be funny if you blocked me. Cause then I could demonstrate how blocking works and that I can still see your comments and reply, etc.

                    In regards to moderating, I nice set of tools that they could implement is a moderator view of the community that would override any of your block-preferences. So your normal surfing could be edit from blocking, but when you go to mod, you could effectively override them temporarily.

                  • Yeah, I was actually coming back to apologize. It was a different mod with the same first half of your name. After posting, I was “wait… was it that mod?” I won’t name them fully but their name also started with “someone”.

                    Edit: realized I said I came back to apologize but never finished. So apologies. That was my mistake.

                    Edit: but the original concept still stands. You said you were told to expect the behavior I described. I don’t understand how that would prove anything against my point.

              • That doesn’t change anything. They’re saying they were told if they block someone, XYZ would happen. And XYZ is what I described. What would changing the direction do? It’s like just asking to be on the other side of the exact behavior that I’m describing. It doesn’t offer new information.

              • Plus, I already know for a fact it works that way. Because I experienced it. I blocked someone and then later, noticed they replied to me because I had not logged in yet.

                Like, I don’t think I should have to prove the way the published documentation says activitypub works. This is objective fact of how it works. There’s no way for me to know who blocks me unless I admin the server where that person actually is and I modify the code to view it. But the activitypub protocol doesn’t publish that and I totally understand why. It’s like how Lemmy doesn’t show aggregated voting, only the voting of that instance. It’s extra info that needs to be added. Now imagine if every blocking action was also now encoded in an activitypub and every instance that read it had to keep that info. Databases would grow much faster than they do now. It’s simply not effective. And it’d have to be repeated so new instances also will get it. So you’re basically adding at least a daily or weekly posting, unencrypted of who everyone is blocking. All you gotta do is setup an instance and just ignore that data. But then you could easily target people who target you. Being entirely transparent is part of the reason blocking can’t work.

    • Why not just advocate for both services having a block feature.

      We’re users, not Lemmy creators. This would be like criticizing Instagram users for using a Facebook service when it’s Facebook and Zuckerberg who are the problems.