Do you have a criteria for what qualifies as block-worthy offence or are you just doing it when you feel like it?
Bonus question: how long is your block list?
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I blocked two accounts on my instance that kept posting porn without the NSFW tag, as a troll. From the message it was likely the same person who owned both accounts.
Mostly racism, sexism, bad-faith arguments, and some religious stuff. I often double-check a person’s post history to make sure I’m not just reading it wrong. I also do so to make sure I’m not blocking someone for a single bad day or bad take.
I think younger me would have argued more or tried to convince them of things by showing evidence, but I just don’t have the time or energy at the moment; I have a full-time job, a small farm, and home maintenance on the (used) house I moved into 6 months ago.
I don’t tend to block anyone online unless I feel like they are harassing me. Haven’t blocked anyone on Lemmy so far. I think people can be too quick to block others who have different points of view these days.
Bad faith arguments and hatred of any minority. That covers about 99% of it
Tankies go straight to the Shadow Realm
My blocklist is 30~40 users long. [For reference, my blocklist in Reddit reached 400 or so.]
To keep it short, I typically block people who, egregious or consistently:
- show lack of reasoning, even if I agree with the conclusion
- misrepresent what others say
- take things off context to judge them, even if I agree with the judgement
- vomit lots of “hard” certainty on things that they cannot reasonably know (e.g. the others’ emotional states over the internet)
- engage in passive aggressiveness (note that I tolerate some clear hostility, just not pass-aggro)
- show clear signs of sealioning (e.g. “I don’t understand” + misrepresentation of what someone else said)
- tell others shit like “trust me” = “I expect you to be a gullible piece of rubbish”
Note that “egregious or consistently” are key words here. Like, I’m not going out of my way to block someone out of a brainfart; this is not some sort of petty revenge, it’s just removing from my sight people who I believe to not contribute with my overall Lemmy experience. I also don’t take issue when people block me, for whatever reason they might have.
I’ll reply to myself to avoid editing the above. The other user made me realise that what I said about pass-aggro is unclear - since the expression is used with multiple meanings.
In this specific context, by passive aggressiveness, I mean “an utterance showing politeness as a disguise for rudeness”.
I’ll give you guys an example. Imagine that Alice says “I saw a potato tree today”. And Bob replies to Alice one of the following:
- “Potatoes do not grow on trees.”
- “Potato tree? Are you braindead or what?”
- “Yeah sure, and I saw some unicorns today. Because you know, potatoes totally grow on trees, right?”
- “Oh dear perhaps you’re a bit confused, so let me enlighten you. Potatoes do not grow on trees. I understand that this might be a bit too complex for you to understand, but put on some effort, okay?”
The first three are not pass-aggro. #1 is simply dry (no attempt at politeness or rudeness); #2 is simply rude (I’m typically OK with that within limits). #3 uses irony and sarcasm in such an obvious way that it comes off as simply rude, there’s no attempt to use the irony to disguise the insult. Only #4 is pass-aggro, as it calls Alice stupid and lazy in a disguised way.
I tend to block people who do this because they rub me off the wrong way - it shows a lack of dignity to be upfront that you don’t see in plain rudeness.
Sealioning is a made up term by those too lazy to explain a concept and looking to antagonise others because they “cannot possibly be unaware of X fact that I care so much about”.
Funnily enough saying someone is sealioning falls within the passive-aggressive behaviour you seem to despise so much.
Sealioning is the discussion equivalent of a DoS (denial of service) attack. In both, the content of the reply is irrelevant; the goal is to flood the person/machine with multiple requests, until they reach a limit and
stop droppingdrop the requests altogether.And while the concept has some problems because it handles some esoteric babble called “intentions” (see: “goal”), it’s still useful when you focus on the behaviour instead.
Funnily enough saying someone is sealioning falls within the passive-aggressive behaviour you seem to despise so much.
Pass-aggro is about tone, not content. You can state something like “you’re sealioning” in a passive aggressive way, or a rude way, or under a bald-on record, so goes on.
[Edit reason: phrasing.]
Sealioning is the discussion equivalent of a DoS (denial of service) attack. In both, the content of the reply is irrelevant; the goal is to flood the person/machine with multiple requests, until they reach a limit and stop dropping the requests altogether.
Thank you for putting it this way. This clarifies some things for me.
You made me notice a revision error in my own comment (“stop dropping” is supposed to be simply “drop”). I’m glad that the meaning is still retrievable though, due to the analogy.
I wasn’t the one who created the analogy, by the way, but it’s damn useful/didactic. Specially because there’s also a sealioning equivalent of DDoS, far more effective than when done by a single entity.
I knew what you meant. It is damn useful, especially for understanding peoples motives offline too. Saving the analogy to my brain for later use.
I’m happy to block people. I don’t owe anybody my time or energy, if they’re tedious and annoying in situation a, they probably will be in B as well.
Its the internet, I just dont care. I’m going to make my experience tolerable and if I can’t I’ll leave. 🤷♂️
I agree. I could block 90% of the people online and there would still be an endless feed of new content to pay attention to. I don’t miss anything by blocking users that I wouldn’t be missing either way.
Beyond the obvious trolls and complete loons, I also block people who never contribute an original comment or post and only reply to other comments in order to “correct” other people or “call them out”. Their comment history makes it immediately obvious when they are this type of user.
They strike me as particularly cowardly and obnoxious, because they only want to attack / start something against, and never risk a simple original assertion of their own. Offense being the best defense, etc. They probably think of themselves as verbal judo masters.
IOW, they are basically using Lemmy as fodder for their pedantry. I’m not interested at all in engaging with this type of jackass. Unfortunately there are a lot of them on the internet. My block list is long.
Being a bad actor.
insulting and calling what they are doing ‘a discussion’.
Telling everyone else they suck on a game that requires they participate.
Making rude demands of others in a free for all group that benefits themselves only.
Being on the internet whether it’s on a forum, dating site, YouTube or game is for entertainment. We’re each paying for this entertainment too. So if your idea and my idea do not line up for what qualifies as entertainment then we don’t need to be interacting.
I have 85 people blocked. Most of them for spamming, probably. The rest for harshing my mellow by aggressively being assholes to others or just because I’ve realized my personal experience is more pleasant with their absence.
I don’t owe my attention to anyone. I see lots of comments here about refusing to censor alternate points of view, but that’s not it. I can enjoy healthy disagreement, but some folks make some agenda their entire identity and I just get tired of them constantly injecting it into every conversation.
On the other hand there’ve been many people I’ve disagreed with, engaged with, found some common ground, and continue to enjoy their presence even knowing we don’t see eye to eye. Or, if they post about other things, I just ignore the rants I disagree with. It’s not filtering out points of view, it’s filtering out people whose presence makes Lemmy a source of stress rather than an interesting, vibrant community. That’s obviously very subjective, but it’s my block list and my peace of mind.
The people who constantly post about Gaza in every single thread are the worst in this regard. While yes, the genocide isn’t okay and it should be discussed, there’s a time and place and it doesn’t need to be brought up everywhere in every discussion. Many of them are needlessly hostile when this is brought up to them and you just get labeled a genocide supporter. Sometimes I just want to scroll and read threads without hearing about children dying all the time. Gaza is their entire personality and it seems like nothing else matters to them in their lives.
My block list has I think 7 people on it. I only block if someone makes my Lemmy experience worse any time I see something from them. Disagreement I am fine with. It’s healthy to see other viewpoints, even if I don’t agree. (Or if it’s an issue of morality, like not viewing minorities as people, a grim reminder that people think like that. Fortunately by the time I see those, someone else has replied on the matter.) Being inflammatory and adding no value to any discussions is what gets you blocked for me. I know I have blocked several spammers, but it appears that their accounts got deleted.
I have blocked many communities though. It’s mostly porn. Furry porn, not for me. Anime porn where the subjects look too young… Just don’t want to see that. Porn that just isn’t my taste. I would just block NSFW but there is some NSFW that isn’t necessarily porn that I want to see. (Ex: frank discussions about anatomy)The stuff that isn’t porn is just communities that are inflammatory echo chambers.
I browse all because I don’t have many subscriptions that are active, so that is why I have so many communities blocked.
Anime porn where the subjects look too young
That seems to be all of it. The amount of pedo bullshit on this platform is staggering. I still see it even with instance and keyword filters.
Ad hominem -> block.
I usually tag problematic users (usually those who constantly discuss in bad faith, are needlessly hostile or rude towards other users, or push dis/misinformation and propaganda) so I know who are repeat offenders with consistent bad behaviour, but I rarely block people unless it’s very clear that they have no interest in participating in good faith or are so irritating that I can’t deal with them anymore. A lot of problematic users still have valuable things to say and I’d rather not make my feed an echo chamber, even if those people often piss me off with their nonsense. But with some of them it sure is tempting.
Being unnecessarily rude, or arguing in bad faith. Got about a dozen people on my block list.
I’ve blocked a few bots but I would only block an actual person if they’re harassing me. I’d rather downvote or report people that are saying hateful things.
