@Edent "The block is a social signal backed up with mild technical restrictions." - this is pretty much what most locks on front doors are. They can be circumvented with the right tools and a bit of effort, but they make a strong social signal.
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.
@Edent "The block is a social signal backed up with mild technical restrictions." - this is pretty much what most locks on front doors are. They can be circumvented with the right tools and a bit of effort, but they make a strong social signal.
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@Edent as you note
and (as someone with over 50,000 confirmed
killsblocks 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.
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