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I don't use Twitter or know quite how the blocking system currently works, so maybe I'm not getting it, but I think the proposal being discussed in the OP is ch

I don't use Twitter or know quite how the blocking system currently works, so maybe I'm not getting it, but I think the proposal being discussed in the OP is changing the blocking mechanism from just being about you not seeing the blocked party's Tweets to outright preventing them from publicly replying to your Tweets and purging any replies they've already posted. That turns it into a tool for censoring the other side of a debate, which is what the parent thread is complaining about. On the other hand, it adds no utility to it as an anti-harassment measure - and indeed would actively undermine its usefulness at serving that goal for conscientious users, since now in order to block someone they need to be willing to obliterate any comment chain that was started by the harassing user replying to one of their Tweets. If you're not willing to do that, because there's valuable content in there that you don't think it would be right to destroy? Well, fuck you, keep getting harassed, then. By contrast, the current system would allow you to block such a user without destroying content in the process, and so wouldn't leave users facing a moral dilemma about whether to resign themselves to sustained harassment or censor a debate in which innocent third parties have participated. If I'm misunderstanding something, I'm all ears.

pjc50 8y ago
Ah, I've read it again and it seems to be something between the two. Let's start how the system works at the moment: tweets that are "in reply to" another tweet are: 1) collapsed under the original by default, unless viewed by someone who follows both parties 2) shown below the original when expanded (a "thread", although not as sophisticated as USENET) 3) not shown to followers of the person who posted the tweet in their timelines (but are visible when you look at "tweets and replies" - beyond that, if you have blocked someone, you don't see any of their tweets unless you choose to. Bloomberg say "tweets from blocked users should no longer appear in the replies to a tweet", but of course blocked is a transitive verb: blocked by whom? If I've blocked people then when I'm looking at a thread they don't appear. At the moment, when others are looking at it, they do. It sounds like they're suggesting a change to (2) so that if the originator of a thread has blocked a reply that's then invisible to other people viewing the thread (although not to people specifically viewing the blocked profile)? So if Alice has blocked Bob and Charlie views the thread, Charlie doesn't see the tweet unless they follow Bob? Actually I think the downside of this is that it leaks information about Alice's blocklist! Currently it's not possible for third parties to tell if A has blocked B, and it's completely impossible for even B to tell if A has muted them. Really the solution to harassment has to be a more functional reporting system; if Bob is actually systematically harassing Alice or posting hate speech, ban them from the platform entirely. Unfortunately there's a big problem with both false positives and false negatives.

pjc50 8y ago

Ah, I've read it again and it seems to be something between the two. Let's start how the system works at the moment: tweets that are "in reply to" another tweet are: 1) collapsed under the original by default, unless viewed by someone who follows both parties 2) shown below the original when expanded (a "thread", although not as sophisticated as USENET) 3) not shown to followers of the person who posted the tweet in their timelines (but are visible when you look at "tweets and replies" - beyond that, if you have blocked someone, you don't see any of their tweets unless you choose to. Bloomberg say "tweets from blocked users should no longer appear in the replies to a tweet", but of course blocked is a transitive verb: blocked by whom? If I've blocked people then when I'm looking at a thread they don't appear. At the moment, when others are looking at it, they do. It sounds like they're suggesting a change to (2) so that if the originator of a thread has blocked a reply that's then invisible to other people viewing the thread (although not to people specifically viewing the blocked profile)? So if Alice has blocked Bob and Charlie views the thread, Charlie doesn't see the tweet unless they follow Bob? Actually I think the downside of this is that it leaks information about Alice's blocklist! Currently it's not possible for third parties to tell if A has blocked B, and it's completely impossible for even B to tell if A has muted them. Really the solution to harassment has to be a more functional reporting system; if Bob is actually systematically harassing Alice or posting hate speech, ban them from the platform entirely. Unfortunately there's a big problem with both false positives and false negatives.