chapotraphouse

Blocking is still really bad on , TBH. If someone blocks you, you can't reply to anything anywhere underneath one of their comments. But other people still can. So it's a fabulous way to 1. get the last word, and 2. have all your brigading allies gang up on someone without them having any chance to respond unless they bring a brigade of their own.

It was a really shit idea. I think the only form of blocking that might actually make sense on Reddit is as a 100% voluntary "I don't want to see things this user posts; hide it from me (by default) by collapsing comments and removing posts from my front page (and maybe multis), and never give me a new-message alert if a reply or DM goes to my inbox (DMs could also just be prevented as they are private and can't be used to encourage others to harass you)." Anything else invites abuse in one way or another. Including not having the option to go back and see if the user is still stalking/defaming you at times and do something about it without unblocking them (with a timeout before you can re-institute the block).

In fact, (just) graying out (and collapsing) posts/comments by users you've blocked under a "post/comment by blocked user" heading so they tend to fade into the background and you know why you'd have to expand/visit them to see more would probably be ideal on Reddit. I don't know about other sites like Twitter, but pretending the behavior of others can't affect you in a public forum so you can just ignore them by poking your head in the sand doesn't seem like a great idea. Effectively having opt-in content warnings, on the other hand, is awesome.