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Maybe it'd be better to just not have any blocking/muting built into such a system at all. If User A doesn't want to see posts from User B, that's fine. User A

Maybe it'd be better to just not have any blocking/muting built into such a system at all. If User A doesn't want to see posts from User B, that's fine. User A can have his client filter them out locally, prior to when they'd otherwise be displayed. Nobody else has to know this is happening. I don't think that User A should be permitted to prevent User B from replying to User A's posts, which in turn prevents User C (or all other users) from discovering what User B thinks about whatever User A posted. User A trying to prevent his otherwise-public posts from being visible to User B seems pointless to me, as User B could log out, or use another account that hasn't been blocked, or ask somebody else who hasn't been blocked to screenshot it, or use some other way around it.

zimpenfish 3y ago
> User A can have his client filter them out locally We've been trying that with email and spam for the last 3 decades and I've got to tell you the results are not good. > prior to when they'd otherwise be displayed. A has to download the harassment from B just to then filter it locally? Seems like you're putting the onus on A here to do the work. What happens if B sends enough to DOS A's link? Or sends CSAM and now A is committing a crime just by downloading the content? > as User B could log out, or use another account that hasn't been blocked Which increases the friction on B if they want to harass A - this is good! We want to make harassment as friction-full as possible!
- Gigachad 3y ago
  It works pretty well on email. When I mark a user as spam or set up a filter rule, all of their content goes direct to spam or even deleted if I want. Doesn't bother me at all. Email has also dealt with the spam issue mostly. If you blast me with too many emails, you get put on a spammer blacklist and servers will just drop the content without delivering it. It also isn't a crime to be unwillingly sent illegal content which you immediately delete.
  - mort96 3y ago
    Email has not solved the spam issue. I regularly get obvious spam email in my inbox, and legit mail still goes in the junk folder from time to time – with gmail. Plus, the automated spam filtering systems make it practically impossible to host your own e-mail, and any self-hosted email will have even worse issues with inbound spam than gmail does. Spam is at the core of what makes email a terrible example of a federated system, along with absolutely terrible client compatibility issues.
    - Gigachad 3y ago
      That's irrelevant, automated blocking is a different discussion. This is about if it matters that the content hit your server or client and then was deleted because you had the user blocked, or if it's better to have a centralized system where the blocked users messages never make it to your client. From the users perspective I can't really see any difference here.
      - mort96 3y ago
        And from a users's perspective, spam makes it through and legit messages end up in spam and the whole email system is more or less centralised due to attempts at combatting the issue. Those are all user facing issues. Your ideas for client-side blocking in a federated system may be okay, I don't know. I'm objecting to the "Email has dealt with the spam issue mostly" thing; it absolutely has not.
        ndriscoll 3y ago
        > the whole email system is more or less centralised due to attempts at combatting the issue Do the big email providers even attempt to combat spam? I got an email from booking.com yesterday that literally contains the text "This message is an advertisement." From what I can tell, Gmail hasn't maintained their spam filters in at least a decade.
  - zimpenfish 3y ago
    > It works pretty well on email. As someone who has been running mail servers for 20 years, no, it does not. I'm sure other mail admins will agree.
- debugnik 3y ago
  > We've been trying that with email and spam Aren't we talking about blocking and muting known user handles? This is easy, the spam problem would be identifying which handles to block. > What happens if B sends enough to DOS A's link? Or sends CSAM and now A is committing a crime just by downloading the content? What happens if B does the same before A had a chance to block them? And why would A's client download the content after reading that B published it from the metadata? > Which increases the friction on B if they want to harass A True, but I'm afraid we already know from Twitter that B will do it anyway, aided by either fast user switching or a Tweetdeck-like interface.
  - zimpenfish 3y ago
    > Aren't we talking about blocking and muting known user handles? This is the same as blocking known spam domains and IP blocks in email. They just switch to a new one. Which is best dealt with at the remote end since the server has a better chance of being able to identify new accounts which are related to blocked ones - Instagram even suggests this for you when you block someone: "...and any future accounts they may create". Having to do this in A's client is much more difficult because it lacks the information that would be useful. > What happens if B does the same before A had a chance to block them? A fair point.
btown 3y ago
The problem is when B comes across a A post and reposts it to B’s followers with a call to action to harass A. If you don’t give A the ability to avoid this by influencing A’s presence on B’s feed, A will quit the platform entirely, and B will have been rewarded (with engagement) and incentivized to stir up mobs in the future. It creates a toxic environment. Blocking is an effective speed bump to this happening!
- eli 3y ago
  Strong user safety features are at odds with a federated protocol. IMHO federation is a mistake.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    Federation is great when properly applied. Email is an example of federation done right. But federated social media is a mistake. Not because it is federated, but because all social media is a mistake.
    - tssva 3y ago
      > Email is an example of federation done right. That's where you lost me.
      - mulmen 3y ago
        Despite their best efforts neither Microsoft nor Google has managed to fully embrace or extinguish email. I’d say it is working very well.
    - dawidpotocki 3y ago
      As someone that self hosts email, hell no. SMTP by itself has no authentication and we had to add crap on top of it like SPF, DKIM, DMARC. Don't have it? Oops, sorry, to spam it goes. Oh and don't forget about a reverse DNS record for your IP address with a correct domain, otherwise some mail servers will deny you. Want other mailservers to send you emails via TLS? Well, there is DANE, but that uses DNSSEC so Gmail doesn't support it. MTA-STS exists, but it's kinda silly and was made just for people that don't want DNSSEC for some reason, but at least Gmail supports it. For some reason there is also TLS-RPT for reporting about TLS use, so mail servers will send you emails that they used TLS, yay. Want your email address to have a picture? There is BIMI, but some mail servers won't display it if you don't pay few thousand dollars a year for some special certificate. Oh and it needs to be a pretty small SVG. Oops, your email still went to spam? Maybe your IP is on some obscure blacklist for no god damn reason? Or Outlook just randomly decided to ban your IP, but will offer you to unban it automatically by filling some weird form? Or maybe Gmail decided to randomly put your reply email to spam to someone that emailed you first? Want to retrieve your mailbox? Oh, do you want IMAP or POP? Obviously you don't want POP, you want IMAP, but you remembered that there is this "new" standard JMAP that is saner than IMAP. Oh what's that? Nobody supports it? Oh well.
ketzo 3y ago
This works for one user against one shitty troll. I think if we have learned literally nothing else, it’s that social media moderation is hard, and the server is going to have to do some work. It just can’t be only on users to locally block shit. It doesn’t work.
panarky 3y ago
> otherwise-public posts If the platform is pseudonymous and allows individuals to create multiple identities, such that it's trivial for those you block to view your posts from a different identity, or even by not logging in at all, then "blocking" isn't really blocking anybody except the lazy and the ignorant. In fact, since most users don't think it through this far, even providing such a fake "block" function is inherently deceptive and user-hostile.
notatoad 3y ago
there's no reason you can't filter privately in the client as well, if you have a client that wants to prioritize privacy. but blocking/muting seems like a reasonable thing to include in the protocol, for clients that are prioritizing resources and not ingesting more posts than they need to and as a signal for algorithms to determine users who are frequently blocked or muted. for somebody like myself, i'm just some dude nobody cares about. my twitter blocklist was major public figures who i didn't want to see retweets of in my feed. donald trump wasn't going to get angry at me because i blocked him, it's fine if that's included in some public list.
specialist 3y ago
All the recommender and curation features should be done by the client, on the client. We had offline mail readers for BBS, CompuServe, BIX, etc. One feature I truly miss is the TWIT filter. I could block u/VancouverMan and you'd be none the wiser.

zimpenfish 3y ago

> User A can have his client filter them out locally We've been trying that with email and spam for the last 3 decades and I've got to tell you the results are not good. > prior to when they'd otherwise be displayed. A has to download the harassment from B just to then filter it locally? Seems like you're putting the onus on A here to do the work. What happens if B sends enough to DOS A's link? Or sends CSAM and now A is committing a crime just by downloading the content? > as User B could log out, or use another account that hasn't been blocked Which increases the friction on B if they want to harass A - this is good! We want to make harassment as friction-full as possible!

Gigachad 3y ago
It works pretty well on email. When I mark a user as spam or set up a filter rule, all of their content goes direct to spam or even deleted if I want. Doesn't bother me at all. Email has also dealt with the spam issue mostly. If you blast me with too many emails, you get put on a spammer blacklist and servers will just drop the content without delivering it. It also isn't a crime to be unwillingly sent illegal content which you immediately delete.
- mort96 3y ago
  Email has not solved the spam issue. I regularly get obvious spam email in my inbox, and legit mail still goes in the junk folder from time to time – with gmail. Plus, the automated spam filtering systems make it practically impossible to host your own e-mail, and any self-hosted email will have even worse issues with inbound spam than gmail does. Spam is at the core of what makes email a terrible example of a federated system, along with absolutely terrible client compatibility issues.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    That's irrelevant, automated blocking is a different discussion. This is about if it matters that the content hit your server or client and then was deleted because you had the user blocked, or if it's better to have a centralized system where the blocked users messages never make it to your client. From the users perspective I can't really see any difference here.
    - mort96 3y ago
      And from a users's perspective, spam makes it through and legit messages end up in spam and the whole email system is more or less centralised due to attempts at combatting the issue. Those are all user facing issues. Your ideas for client-side blocking in a federated system may be okay, I don't know. I'm objecting to the "Email has dealt with the spam issue mostly" thing; it absolutely has not.
      - ndriscoll 3y ago
        > the whole email system is more or less centralised due to attempts at combatting the issue Do the big email providers even attempt to combat spam? I got an email from booking.com yesterday that literally contains the text "This message is an advertisement." From what I can tell, Gmail hasn't maintained their spam filters in at least a decade.
- zimpenfish 3y ago
  > It works pretty well on email. As someone who has been running mail servers for 20 years, no, it does not. I'm sure other mail admins will agree.
debugnik 3y ago
> We've been trying that with email and spam Aren't we talking about blocking and muting known user handles? This is easy, the spam problem would be identifying which handles to block. > What happens if B sends enough to DOS A's link? Or sends CSAM and now A is committing a crime just by downloading the content? What happens if B does the same before A had a chance to block them? And why would A's client download the content after reading that B published it from the metadata? > Which increases the friction on B if they want to harass A True, but I'm afraid we already know from Twitter that B will do it anyway, aided by either fast user switching or a Tweetdeck-like interface.
- zimpenfish 3y ago
  > Aren't we talking about blocking and muting known user handles? This is the same as blocking known spam domains and IP blocks in email. They just switch to a new one. Which is best dealt with at the remote end since the server has a better chance of being able to identify new accounts which are related to blocked ones - Instagram even suggests this for you when you block someone: "...and any future accounts they may create". Having to do this in A's client is much more difficult because it lacks the information that would be useful. > What happens if B does the same before A had a chance to block them? A fair point.

btown 3y ago

The problem is when B comes across a A post and reposts it to B’s followers with a call to action to harass A. If you don’t give A the ability to avoid this by influencing A’s presence on B’s feed, A will quit the platform entirely, and B will have been rewarded (with engagement) and incentivized to stir up mobs in the future. It creates a toxic environment. Blocking is an effective speed bump to this happening!

eli 3y ago
Strong user safety features are at odds with a federated protocol. IMHO federation is a mistake.
- mulmen 3y ago
  Federation is great when properly applied. Email is an example of federation done right. But federated social media is a mistake. Not because it is federated, but because all social media is a mistake.
  - tssva 3y ago
    > Email is an example of federation done right. That's where you lost me.
    - mulmen 3y ago
      Despite their best efforts neither Microsoft nor Google has managed to fully embrace or extinguish email. I’d say it is working very well.
  - dawidpotocki 3y ago
    As someone that self hosts email, hell no. SMTP by itself has no authentication and we had to add crap on top of it like SPF, DKIM, DMARC. Don't have it? Oops, sorry, to spam it goes. Oh and don't forget about a reverse DNS record for your IP address with a correct domain, otherwise some mail servers will deny you. Want other mailservers to send you emails via TLS? Well, there is DANE, but that uses DNSSEC so Gmail doesn't support it. MTA-STS exists, but it's kinda silly and was made just for people that don't want DNSSEC for some reason, but at least Gmail supports it. For some reason there is also TLS-RPT for reporting about TLS use, so mail servers will send you emails that they used TLS, yay. Want your email address to have a picture? There is BIMI, but some mail servers won't display it if you don't pay few thousand dollars a year for some special certificate. Oh and it needs to be a pretty small SVG. Oops, your email still went to spam? Maybe your IP is on some obscure blacklist for no god damn reason? Or Outlook just randomly decided to ban your IP, but will offer you to unban it automatically by filling some weird form? Or maybe Gmail decided to randomly put your reply email to spam to someone that emailed you first? Want to retrieve your mailbox? Oh, do you want IMAP or POP? Obviously you don't want POP, you want IMAP, but you remembered that there is this "new" standard JMAP that is saner than IMAP. Oh what's that? Nobody supports it? Oh well.

ketzo 3y ago

This works for one user against one shitty troll. I think if we have learned literally nothing else, it’s that social media moderation is hard, and the server is going to have to do some work. It just can’t be only on users to locally block shit. It doesn’t work.

panarky 3y ago

> otherwise-public posts If the platform is pseudonymous and allows individuals to create multiple identities, such that it's trivial for those you block to view your posts from a different identity, or even by not logging in at all, then "blocking" isn't really blocking anybody except the lazy and the ignorant. In fact, since most users don't think it through this far, even providing such a fake "block" function is inherently deceptive and user-hostile.

notatoad 3y ago

there's no reason you can't filter privately in the client as well, if you have a client that wants to prioritize privacy. but blocking/muting seems like a reasonable thing to include in the protocol, for clients that are prioritizing resources and not ingesting more posts than they need to and as a signal for algorithms to determine users who are frequently blocked or muted. for somebody like myself, i'm just some dude nobody cares about. my twitter blocklist was major public figures who i didn't want to see retweets of in my feed. donald trump wasn't going to get angry at me because i blocked him, it's fine if that's included in some public list.

specialist 3y ago

All the recommender and curation features should be done by the client, on the client. We had offline mail readers for BBS, CompuServe, BIX, etc. One feature I truly miss is the TWIT filter. I could block u/VancouverMan and you'd be none the wiser.