blog! “Social Media Blocking Has Always Been A Lie”
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blog! “Social Media Blocking Has Always Been A Lie”
What does it mean to block someone on a social media site? Way back in the mists of time, we dealt with trolls on Usenet with the almighty PLONK - PLaced On Newsgroup Killfile. It meant your newsreader never downloaded their posts. They could rant at you all day long, and you'd never …
Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/09/social-media-blocking-has-always-been-a-lie/
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#ActivityPub #BlueSky #mastodon #SocialMedia #twitter -
@Edent T-Swizzle? 🤪
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@25kV
I'm hip to the kids' jive. -
Joy Aliza Denebeimreplied to Terence Eden last edited by
@Edent yes, but on #usenet we spent all our time saying don't feed the trolls. Nobody listened, right @Desertdragon ?
Instead most people just let them fester and eventually they turned into the #gop #magats and #trump
So, all you folks that didn't use kill files are responsible for the mess we're in. Don't say we didn't tell you this would happen.
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Ryan Castellucci :nonbinary_flag:replied to Terence Eden last edited by [email protected]
@Edent as you note
Again, it isn't impossible for a blocked user to see content - but technical restrictions means it takes effort. And, it turns out, for all but the most obsessive abusers - a mild bit of UI friction is all that it takes for them to stop.
and (as someone with over 50,000 confirmed kills blocks on Twitter) I feel like you downplay the value of this friction too much. It made a big difference for me.
Regarding Bluesky, I find the public blocklists very useful - I can crawl my friends blocklists and block accounts that enough of them are blocking.
On Twitter, before Space Karen took away our toys (API access) I had IFF (identity friend/foe) scripts that would analyze followers and following data to try to determine how to deal with people.
My mass blocking was based on follow/follower network analysis, and I probably had the most complete blocklist of anti-trans bigots for a while. They sometimes got upset that they were preemptively blocked even though their accounts were fairly new, they'd never interacted with me, and they weren't on any public blocklists.