- Joined
- Apr 14, 2023
imo, blocking isn't necessarily the worst thing a social media platform can do. There are legitimate reasons why people would want to block someone, be it for personal safety (such as harassment that simply "turning off the computer" can't solve) or because you want to block every single advertising bot on Twitter because fuck seeing a Disney parks ad every 4-5 posts. A person shouldn't have to deal with constant harassment and threats to their own safety, especially in a day and age where people are more willing to take things IRL than even 10 years ago.
But on the same token, a "muting" feature is essentially the same thing as a block, but far less extreme and ought to be used in circumstances that involve merely a disagreed opinion or someone generally being a harmless nuisance. I don't like blocking people on Discord, because it feels too extreme an action for someone who is talkative or posts too much but is otherwise harmless and a decent person. But blocking is the only thing you can do on Discord and it has forward-facing "tells" to the blocked person that makes a situation even worse.
So my personal take is that there are legitimate reasons for block features to be put into place, but if given the choice I would vastly prefer muting options over blocking ones, because I'm not so paper thin-skinned that I can't handle someone who has a different opinion than I, but don't have the patience to engage further with them, if that makes any sense.
