Why is blocking so common nowadays?

Life is too short to deal with weirdos treating lemmy as their blog. Some are overzealous but you have to curate your own space on federated platforms

I block the moment I realize someone is a troll, or worse. No exception.

Like already mentioned, life is way too short to waste one more second of it with those people desire to be as harmful as they can be or with their constant need for attention and validation.

Edit: typos

People are trying to 'win the argument' for personal satisfaction. They're not trying to self-correct or seek the truth.

I think I’ve only blocked a handful of people over a decade

I'm the opposite; I have hundreds of people blocked, mostly because they are bores.

I used to agree with you. Ever since I started just blocking anyone that was being annoying my experience on the web has been great.

Trolls have no right to any of my time.

I've got better things to do than read a load of horseshit from bad-faith weirdos, so I block them. No point engaging with them and reading their opinions makes my day measurably worse.

I use it to curate my lemmy experiance. 99% of the users/communities I block aren't for anything personal, they're just clogging up my ALL feed with things I dont care about (for example, sports ball or foreign language comms).

Blocking is a VERY GOOD THING.

The internet is a cesspool. You need to curate it.

Counterpoint- why hasn't blocking been more common?

I'm a millennial, so I've basically grown up with the internet. Blocking has been a feature on basically any website, app, etc. that lets you interact with other people for as long as I can remember.

And I've never been afraid to use it. I've blocked probably hundreds of people across countless platforms over the last 2 decades or so, and I think my Internet experience has been better for it.

When I was in school, and I assume still to this day, one of the big things that always seemed to have people's feathers ruffled was "cyberbullying" and other sorts of online harassment.

Now I'll admit, somehow I ended up a reasonably well-liked, maybe even popular dude, (no idea how my weird, antisocial, probably-autistic ass pulled that off) so I was never really the target of it myself.

But it always baffled me how people let it be a thing. A whole lot of those problems always seemed like they could have been solved by just hitting the block button.

Not all of them of course, but a lot of them. Blocking someone of course doesn't stop them from talking about you to someone else, but at that point a lot of it can just be out of sight and out of mind.

Back when I still had a Facebook, I had probably half of my town blocked because they were always posting dumb shit in the local groups. I had a bunch of businesses blocked because they spammed advertisements everywhere. I had actual friends who I hung out with IRL blocked or at least unfollowed because they flooded my feed with shitposts. Half of my family was blocked because I just didn't want to deal with them on social media. I preemptively blocked people I work with or otherwise knew casually because they don't need to see what I'm doing online.

For me personally, I just don't feel like dealing with yet another source of garbage that I don't want to read.

In happier times, I felt a different way about blocking. Nowadays, the fucking potus forces the country to match some phony fucking Fox News image, and I don't really care about reading some dumb assholes dumb rant anymore. Not blocking people and "dialog" and "debate bro" shit isn't fixing this crap anyway, so I'm going to go ahead and make my own life contain a little less hassle.

That's also why I'm only really here and on mastodon. I know they're basically left wing safe spaces. I frankly don't give a fuck.

Like another commenter said, polarization and cemented, frequently extreme, views. You're not going to change their mind on anything, but they're constantly trying to change your mind on everything. I consider them shills and hit that block button.

I also block people who are here "on a mission" for whatever cause. Social media has enough activists, and even if I agree with them, I'm still thinking "will you shut up, man?".

I also block people who intentionally take others out of context as an excuse to attack them or inject drama into every interaction. There's plenty of that to go around, and thankfully, there doesn't seem to be a limit on the number of blocks I can issue.

Basically, I'm not here for drama or activism or circle-jerking any political cause or to suffer immature edgelords. I just wanna talk about cool stuff with rational people. Blocking helps separate the wheat from the chaff in that regard. Anyone who has a pattern of making this place unenjoyable gets blocked

People don't like being forced to engage with belligerent reactionaries.

I'm 31 now but I've always been pretty quick with a block button, i don't mind people disagreeing with me, but some people are just overly aggressive and I find life's better to just not care about them and block.

I also block trolls because you know don't feed the trolls.

Blocking is tempting when someone actively ignores arguments but keeps coming back with the same thing over and over, or can't avoid ad hominem attacks.

That said, my block list is empty, but I have tagged people so I know if I'm running into them again.

Bots, trolls, egomanics, thin skinneds.

If someone isn't convinced by a reasonable explanation, they aren't worth engaging with.

You find this out pretty quick when trying to interact in good faith on the internet.

I have blocked more in the last year than I have in the last 20 combined. There are far, far too many people arguing to troll, arguing in bad faith, threatening, or insulting that will do everything they can to bait you, derail your argument, DM you with insults, etc.

It’s probably because I’ve become far more critical of anti-science, shitty politics, and shitty people, so I’m sure that’s part of the reason, but nonetheless I don’t have the time or patience anymore to waste on the pigeons knocking pieces over and shitting on the chessboard declaring victory, so I block them.

I also have been blocked outright when presenting any objectively factual rebuttal. Facts are often strictly disallowed in the narrative, particularly political and anti-science ones. People don’t want their flow of internet “likes” interrupted.

I constantly block both users and communities on Lemmy. Mostly because they are spouting doomer nonsense, and I ain't got no time for their bullshit.

Views, positions have gotten more extreme and cemented at that. Probably due to algorithms of "traditional" social media, that focus on them to raise clicks. (This trend to extreme positions and freaking out on the slightest trigger is also noticeable in real life behaviour, imho.) I sometimes block folks because I know there will not be a frank exchange of views but pure hate, extremism.

Plus spammers.

It depends what you're on (social media) for.

If you're there to get some positive social interaction and read some articles or funny pictures, it completely makes sense to block agitators or regular shitposters.

If you're there to have political arguments and engage with rage bait then you leave everyone unblocked.

Its really not that complicated.

I think it's more of a space curation thing. As a tumblr user mentioned, "I pressed a button to get rid of an annoying guy and I would do it again".

Personally, I block people who espouse things I believe are genuinely spiteful, hateful, or shitty. Generally, I use the block button to "curate" my experience with the intention that I can use Lemmy as brief escapism when I'm in the bathroom or on the train without having my mood affected by somebody posting something shitty.

I don't block anyone for normal disagreements, because I'm a relatively normal adult and as such that sort of thing doesn't bother me.

I think there is a difference between different people - and maybe it has changed generationally too. I can think of some obvious potential reasons though:

1. the number of people who are being horrible is increasing. The increasing division in society is reflected online. That means people have more reason to block people.
2. the proliferation of social media bubbles makes people less used to encountering opinions that differ significantly from their own.

I usually find myself blocked by people who just disagree with me. I (increasingly) rarely lose my rag online, but people find it annoying to have someone reply to them who disagrees on certain things and who doesn't just shut up and go away quickly.

I have a pretty high tolerance for that kind of irritation but after a few dozen replies back and forth I'll also use the block button. It's less about not seeing their posts in the future, more as a way to force myself to disengage and get annoyed again.

I've been online since BBS days. Never blocked anyone. Never could understand why people do that. Just ignore them, whatever.

So many people, later on down the road have something to say worthwhile that I wouldn't have known if I just blocked them. Gotta give some leeway on the internet, no one really knows tone or intent most of the time.

There's this streamer I sort of follow who did some reaction streams to proximitychat videos. If you don't know, it's basically this guy in VRchat who joins public lobbies and trolls the people in there - most of them crazily obsessed with the game and roleplay to the point of basically living in VR.

This guy will be in a public lobby for maybe hours, constantly trolling, and all they do is ask him to stop. Maybe they'll threaten to remove him as a friend (which is such a common occurrence that it might almost seems like capital punishment to these terminally online dweebs), but they almost never kick or block him outright.

In the reaction streams the question is always, why not just kick and block the guy? Sure, don't block everyone who makes an annoying remark outright, but as I said, this guy is in there for hours without seemingly any attempt to actually get him to stop. It seems that the easiest thing is to just talk a bit, find out he's there in bad faith and then block him, but they never do.

What I'm getting at is, people should block more. Not that, again, you should block everyone who slightly annoys you or challenges your viewpoint, but as soon as you find out they are there in bad faith, just block and move on. I feel ancient for saying this but as they say: don't feed the trolls.

You say "civil disagreements" but from what I've seen blocking mostly happens when they sidestep the issue with a personal attack or ad hominid response.

Also I've seen some blocking just on people being associated with known bad actors like hatemongers or somebody's stalker

I don't think I ever blocked anyone on reddit, but I've been pretty block happy on lemmy. Mostly because it's a smaller community. With reddit, it was easy enough to unsubscribe from the big popular communities and focus on my niche interests and rigorously modded communities like askHistorians. That way I mostly saw stuff that was genuinely interesting to me. And if someone was annoying, they were just one voice among thousands.

Here on lemmy, there's not enough activity to be overly selective, and I actually enjoy the casual vibe of asklemmy, showerthoughts and nostupidquestions. While I'd never visit their reddit counterparts, here the community is small and it feels more personal. But this also means that there's the occasional poster who I'd rather just not have to see. So, to keep my time on lemmy enjoyable, I block them.

I don't really think it's a big deal, I don't even think it's a criticism of those posters. It's really just that the content of their posts / comments are something that doesn't add value to my experience. I've blocked well-intentioned, but obviously teenage, users because I'm not interested in their personal life questions (but they're entitled to ask!); I blocked someone just for posting too many moth memes when I was getting sick of that fad.

I'm pretty sure I've never blocked anyone for disagreeing with me or my beliefs, but if someone seems like their trolling, or simply has such poor social communication skills that they are coming across that way, I'll block them. I generally look at users history and check if I'm likely to miss anything in the future. But invariably, the type of user I consider blocking generally has a bunch of dumb, negative or uninteresting comments and posts.

last I checked I had over 220 users blocked. now it's probably 250.

I block people who are willfully ignorant or trolls.

I think it's related to echo chamber behaviour. A way to filter out any dissenting voice because any one that disagrees is as annoying a spammer and as hurtful as a bully.

And at the same time is not that different from walking away from any rando from the street that most probably I won't see ever again. Lol.

I don't know, I personally don't block people, instead I use lots of tags to remember past interactions.

It's baffling how quick people are to do it. A while ago, I sold an old electronic thing on Marketplace to someone. A day later, they sent me an angry message saying that it didn't work and how I scammed them, then proceeded to block me. I would've liked the opportunity to troubleshoot with them or even refund the item if it turned out to actually be broken, but... blocking me precludes all that. What exactly did they hope to achieve?

I have done this a few times, for me it was just that I was writing a reply and 80% through I realized that I didn't want to argue any more, so I blocked the guy after posting it, just so I wouldn't get any more crap to deal with.

I don't tend to block unless there was clear malice or it is being done in bad faith. Prime examples of this would be accounts that when I look at their history is almost exclusively argumentative posts(this is generally prompted by another reason), people who do personal attacks instead of standard discussion, and people whom it's clear that they aren't trying to add to the conversation, and are trying to derail or push an agenda.

I haven't blocked anyone on this account, but it's new.

On my last one, I think I blocked three users. I believe all were basically trying to flood a community so that it was unreadable (one, IIRC, was just posting the same large Simpsons or Futurama image repeatedly throughout a thread to try to stop people from talking).

I've not blocked anyone here or on Reddit. I have on Mastodon but only becase the 3 people I have blocked are fucking interminably boring not because of any philsophival difference of opinion or they were rude or some shit.

I tend not to engage too much, it is some random on the internet after all. I am old, I've been doing this shit from IRL meetups of computer clubs, to BBS's where I actually personally knew just about everyone from meet ups, then Usenet and IRC opened the world, then fora, then reddit (because Usenet died) now here and Mastodon..

Blocking is self-care. Just with the added teeth of "get tf out of my phone."

That's it.

It's maintaining your personal peace, and frankly I find it weird that it's even a conversation let alone as stigmatized as it is. People still have a litany of ways to reconnect outside digital. It's literally what people had to do before blocking was a thing.

I dunno I haven’t blocked anyone and I don’t know if anyone has blocked me.

Im very pro block. I prefer that users can do stuff themselves over moderation honestly. I would like blocking to be reciprical and I have to do a lot of it for communities because the language thing often either seems to not work or my suspicion is the person making the community did not set it. That being said I block few users but tons of communities. The fediverse is not really large enough to subscribe to some stuff and ignore the rest. I block anything I have no interest in or sometimes just because its to niche for me. Things like sports, memes, and communities about like one specific thing like a tv series or video game.

Social media split and modified people so much they're often immediately feeling threatened and block that out, imo.

I'm quite happy to have had some discussions (!) on lemmy where I or the other person could explain the view or clear the (mis)understanding and both be wiser people afterwards.

Because you can go through your whole life with zero negative social corrections. It's a low trust, collapse of society thing

Cognitive dissonance.

Even when someone says some stupidly egregious shit, or uses thorns instead of th, its way easier to block them than try to understand that however stupid and misguided they may be that there is a person on the other side who may actually have a point somewhere u Herbert the radicalization and between the five brainless they have.

I think blocking is justified when someone actually means you personal physical harm in some way, but that so rarely ever happens.

hmm, blocked! /j

It's how society is degenerating. Respect for each other is gone. The bullets have started to fly.

Follow-up to this question after seeing many responses (and thank you): What is your default mode for self-doubt when engaging in discussions?

That is, no matter how confident you may be in something, do you maintain an open door, or are your beliefs you block over completely set in stone?

For me, little terrifies me more than becoming the thing I hate; to be clouded by my own cognitive bias; to inadvertently throw myself into an echo-chamber of self-validation. As such I try my best to always maintain at least the slightest bit of doubt in even my strongest beliefs, and to that end to at least let dialogue challenging that come through.

I'll try to be civil and will ask clarifying questions.

However, as soon as I see someone both-sides-ing, I block them.
Ain't got no time for their "can't we all just get along, kumbaya" centrist bullshit anymore. No we can't "just get along", the overton window has gone too far to the right for that.
You have actual Nazis running shit now, or attempting to run things in other nations.

We need to fight them, the time for "understanding" is over.

Because people online are jerks

I'm getting older and more tired. I don't have the energy to deal with what is a high chance of intentional trolling, misinformation, or smearing. People intentionally twisting my words to be politically opposite of what I said has been on the rise over the last year or two, and I simply dint want to interact with people who are malicious or blindly support what someone says without actually reading the context.

The real world is already shit. I don't need to interact with these people online too.

I blocked pretty freely on Twitter till I left the site around when I got the Bluesky invite. I still block freely on there, but not Reddit or Lemmy. I didn't on Reddit cause there was a cap on how many accounts you can have blocked and Lemmy doesn't handle blocks in a way I like so I just don't bother. I like being able to curate my experience and the experience others that interact with me have. I got no energy for shit stains so blocking is easier than constantly knowing they exist.

Why would you read someone you don't want to? Why would you use a feature of the platform?

Funny you posted this right before I made my post. If the way you behaved in the thread is how you behave elsewhere, you absolutely deserve getting blocked.

I think the only thing that has really changed is that way more people just talk about who and what they block instead of just blocking and moving on.

Yeah, you are missing context. I can tell right away when someone is arguing from bad faith or spewing propaganda. I don't report, I just block.

You don't want to get blocked, I get it. You think it is some failing in people but it is just you who is failing to understand other people's decisions.

You are thinking about this from your very naive point of view. You are being very disingenuous painting everyone who blocks as someone who is not interested in conversation especially with people who don't agree with them.

While I am sure this happens there is another side to this which is just people blocking obvious trolls for their mental health. I am never going to convince an incel to stop hating women. There is no point in talking to them.