from ptz@dubvee.org to fediverse@lemmy.world on 16 Apr 14:54
https://dubvee.org/post/3175618
I get it. There’s some real jerks around here. Whether they’re constantly argumentative, downright rude, always acting in bad faith, just plain trolls, overly opinionated on every subject, have the social skills of a Nausicaan, or whatever - the Fediverse is growing, and it’s bound to attract toxicity in one way or another.
This post is mostly a PSA for anyone who’s feeling like leaving because they’re tired of dealing with things like that. I’ve been there several times myself, I know exactly how you feel, and I’m tired of seeing good people harassed off the platform.
Just remember that blocking is a very powerful way to stay in control of your experience. Be it a set of users, me specifically, a list of keywords, a whole community, or an entire instance: if it’s causing you nothing but stress, hit that block button and see if that improves your experience here. Unlike the alien site, there is no limit to the number of entities you can block; you’re in control.
Another thing to keep in mind is different instances have different vibes, and the experience can totally differ depending on the instance’s moderation and federation policy.
In conclusion, your experience here can be what you make of it; don’t be afraid to just block the parts that stress you out. You’re not “creating an echo chamber” as everyone likes to say (often in bad faith) – you’re just taking care of yourself.
threaded - newest
I use the block button like hideki kamiya uwu
I’ve yet to block anyone here and the only one I had blocked on Reddit was Gallowboob.
Well that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.
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Yeah, why do considerate mods like OP have to wade in and tell others they can just block you? Wotta revoltin' development. /s
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I found that a total of like 5 people post basically all of the lemmynsfw stuff. Once I blocked them, it almost all went away. Pretty sure the internet is nothing but bots now.
Also, if you’re on the internet expecting all sunshine and rainbows – leave now. The internet is not a place for that. Everything now is rage-bait designed to get more clicks, and the internet has always been the wild west with major hostilities all the time. It’s not a good place to spend your time if you’re looking to relax.
IMO the greatest strength of the Fediverse is the increased number of mods and admins looking at everything. Don’t want rage bait? Join an instance that has rules against it.
Nah fuck that. Mods are power hungry fat morons who exert the editorial discretion of a wet noodle. Almost every community in the fediverse is full of this crap. Things aren’t removed because they’re harmful, they’re removed because some mod disagrees.
There’s also the problem with every instance admin having access to deeper internals; I’m waiting for the day people start getting banned for upvoting the wrong thing.
Shoutout to !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
You should start your own instance it sounds like :P
Why? It’s too much bandwidth, too much upkeep, I already modded/ran communities larger than lemmy; I DON’T want to do it again, especially if I’m paying out of pocket for it. Having to deal with whiny cry-bitches when you DON’T ban something that they don’t like it almost as bad as having the stuff banned in the first place.
Isn’t lemmynsfw automatically blocked on LW? I don’t see any posts from lemmynsfw.
Nope. They’re federated, so no reason they wouldn’t show unless you turn all NSFW stuff off.
I just blocked the instance entirely. I’m not interested in seeing porn browsing lemmy, and I doubt the people who made an account on the porn community are posting the most enlightening non porn stuff.
I’m okay with seeing it from time to time - but when my /all would get flooded with PAGES, and PAGES of the stuff with no normal articles in between, I started muting those users.
That’s one of the benefits of the smaller community here too, the block button actually feels like it does something. If you’re frustrated by comments that add nothing to anything or are fishing for drama etc, a short commitment to blocking repeat offenders really improves things quickly
I'd add "report" to that advice. If somebody is outright being jerks, that is probably against your instance's rules — and if it isn't, there are plenty others to choose from.
Blocking helps you, but reporting people (or instances) that are just here to troll will help others.
True. If it’s report-worthy, absolutely. But there are certainly accounts that aren’t violating any rules but can still be a source of stress. Those are often the “rules lawyer” type who knows exactly how to stay right on the line without crossing it.
Counterpoint is that if that person is finally banned, they’re 9 times out of 10 just going to spin up a new alt and start back up with the same shtick. If everyone just blocks them, they’re just shouting into the wind wondering why no one’s taking their bait. I dislike how Reddit had “shadow bans”, but I can see how they would be effective when used surgically.
Temp bans (a couple of days), work too. If they’re actually trolling, they usually won’t come back. Then just temp ban the next alt if they do, repeat.
Good to know, and yeah, kind of matches what I’ve observed. I tend to permaban outright trolls, but yeah, they usually spin up a new account and never come back to that, so it’s probably overkill. I guess I just don’t like leaving the door open for them to come back…just in case lol.
For me, I temp ban because it makes it more easy to do. I don’t wrestle with whether or not I’m doing the right thing. Instead, I know it’s only temp so no one was harmed if I make a mistake. It’s more for me to take out the trolls early on.
I agree with this 100%. The mods can’t get rid of the bad guys if they don’t know about them. There are very few mods for relatively big communities, help them out if you see something going bad. They might not agree with you, but it’s still good practice if people aren’t following the rules.
You’re very right. Blocking when they are being an asshole is just putting your head in the sand. It might feel petty but remember that others are probably also impacted by their shitty behaviour.
Agreed. I report bad behavior where I see it. I’ve only blocked one person, becausen they took a downvote as a personal attack and started DMing me.
I read all reports on my instance (i get reports on our users and from our users, too; so i see quite a lot) rest assured, all your reports actually do something.
Also, voyager lets you tag users which is a godsend.
If I notice someone who is unnecessarily rude, dodgy opinions, bigoted or something, I add a tag, and if I see it is constant repetitive behaviour, I’ll block them.
Thunder too, installed it specifically for user tags!
I hope they bring that to Lemmy overall, it will make for a much better experience for everyone. Mobile is really hard to mod from.
Would be a great selling point over centralized alternatives too. “take control of your own experience” and all that. Reddit will never be able to achieve that level
Reddit Executive Suite (RES) was amazing for that. I’ve been gone so long that I’m not sure it works anymore.
It appears to be still working on old.reddit. I no longer have an account there, but occasionally check on communities I miss here and RES still seems to be chugging away.
Reddit Enhancement Suite does still work, they just had to break a few features from the api thingy.
There is a voyager frontend on web. But I think it’s only a mobile view vger.app/posts/lemm.ee/all
No it works on desktop as well.
I never realized that Thunder has something for it, because there is zero UI for it as far as i can see. There is just the list in the settings that you can manually add people to. This doesnt do anything however… I expected the label to show up next to the username or something but it just doesnt.
If you long press on a comment for actions and then hit “user”, you see the option to add a label at the bottom of that menu.
A bit hidden, I agree, but very useful.
Oooh okay it shows up only on comments of the tagged person. I was looking at posts and their profile. Thanks for the quick guide.
Boost has user tagging as well.
Only issue is the tag and report dialogs look exactly alike and multiple times I’ve unknowingly clicked report in error. I’m kinda surprised I never got criticised for abusing the report function when all I’ve written is “pro-russia” or “idiot”
You can also track aggregate up and down votes per user! You’re a solid +13 for me, you’re cool.
Why give people a second chance to hurt you? Just block away!
One comment does not a whole commenter make! I’ve had a few cases where someone acts poorly on one post, but is usually a conscientious and interesting commenter. Personally, I want to see more conversation, so I’m hesitant to ban people, but if your math is different, that’s fine!
If you disagree with someone or someone tells you that you’re wrong you can just immediately block them with no effort.
People are so used to being able to instantly ignore anybody that they never develop the skills to deal with people disagreeing with them or having support an argument.
It’s a self-reinforcing cycle.
Yeah, adults should be able to tell the difference between someone disagreeing with them and someone being rude/trolling.
I don’t think I ever needed to block anyone, but I kinda stopped commenting as much nowadays cause I realized a lot of times people just don’t understand something and say things out of ignorance + pretentiousness, immediately attacking whoever correct what they’re saying. I don’t think there’s a way out of that in these kinds of open discussion threads, unfortunately, because it’s not exactly bad faith.
It’s not bad faith, it’s just a learned behavior that’s antisocial.
Outrageous comments are heavily rewarded in public social media where everyone is pseudo-anonymous. At the same time, almost nobody wants to be the person on the receiving end of outrageous takes.
We’re rewarding the wrong behaviours.
I think it’s also easy to misinterpret something on one post. A lot of times something that looked bigoted or dodgy opinion was just poorly done sarcasm or something.
Because then I can’t downvote and report them for future harmful behavior.
I do tag them so I know not to engage.
Good point.
it does? i don’t see that option anywhere.
edit: of course the second I comment I find the option lol
second edit: hit the settings wheel at the bottom. its on that page.
Huh? Could you kindly tell where the option is? I can’t find it?
you have to enable it first under settings-> User Tags and once it’s on you can long press a user name.
You’re the real MVP, thank you very much!!
I recently had someone I already had tagged as “racist” replying to me with some misogyny, clicked on his profile and found him defending the R slur. Because instances are smaller, it’s actually feasible to message instance admins when there is someone like that too.
Okay I am gonna bite. What is the R slur?
https://www.specialolympics.org/stories/impact/why-the-r-word-is-the-r-slur
thank you!
Cw r slur
spoiler
Retard
How do you add a tag? I’m on voyager and can’t see the option. Sorry for my ignorance!
Edit. Ignore me - someone asked and answered further down the thread.
I’m on Thunder and I just labeled you as “taught me that users can be labeled”
Boost too
Yes and no.
I am a big fan of block buttons and use them quite liberally (if someone responds to me in a manner that makes it clear they have no intention of having a conversation? I never see them ever again).
But the problem is that it only blocks it for the user who blocks them. So harassment is still a thing and now even fewer people are likely to flag it for moderation (to the extent that works).
There is obviously room for abuse but I am a firm believer that any block feature must be bidirectional. If user A blocks user B then A and B can no longer see each other or interact. Which would be a fundamental lemmy feature which makes things difficult.
But “just block them” is good for people who are annoying. Not for people who are abusive. And while the latter isn’t SUPER common on lemmy, there are still a good number of people who respond to the simplest of things with “Fuck you you fucking moron and you should go kill yourself”
Thank you! I try to exercise caution for myself of am I just off put by this or is this truly uncessary behavior, and I’m glad the option to judge for myself is available.
Block users and instances (although blocking instances just blocks the topic posts from that instance, not all the users from that instance).
Wish instance blocking actually blocked properly. But the main devs know everyone would block the tanky triad immediately and they’d have no one to troll.
Instance blocking works on:
1) PieFed
2) the Lemmy apps Sync and Connect
3) instance admins who can choose to defederate
4) someone willing to go deep and make a custom web browser filter (presumably like Ublock Origin I would guess)
Nothing else works.
What I read to do is to call them out, report them, then block them. They need to know they’re being mean.
Additional PSA to admins not running a “universal free speech” instance- if you see someone someone being obnoxious it’s probably annoying your users just as much as is is you. Don’t put the onus fully on users to curate their experience. The Fediverse needs our adults in the room!
I know for a fact I’m opinionated, and don’t have problems sharing them.
Please, by all means, block me if you think seeing my comments is adversely affecting you. I’d rather be ignored by someone than make their day worse (unless they’re actively trying to make others miserable, but that’s a separate discussion)
The fediverse has definitely gotten a little less hostile after blocking a few things.
And remember you can jump ship to another instance at any time! I’ve hopped a few times but for now my instance is filling my needs without much drama that I am aware of.
I think it’s less about having strong opinions and more with how those are expressed. But either way, you’re here with a good attitude, and that’s appreciated.
I quickly went over your comment history of the last 30 days and you have almost no downvotes. You are a wholesome person and I’m glad you are here!
Same!
I have blocked a few communities which I have really enjoyed. I think there is definitely a different but freeing experience to be in charge of curating your experience instead of algorithms doing it for you. It’s more work but the freedom is nice but making the constant choice feels hard.
Im a big believer in block. I think its better for people to peruse all and block communities they are uninterested in and you should totally block users you don't like. To me it should be like real life. Don't hang with folks you don't like. My hope for the fediverse is instances that only remove things to stay out of legal trouble and communities that only block things that are unrelated. I want all the big tools to be at the user level. Bottom up.
The biggest toxicity comes from the tank triad. I have blocked them and now it is peaceful.
That’s like the “install uBlock Origin” first step as far as I’m concerned lol.
Yup. Learned it the hard way. My first account was with lemmy.ml and it got banned because of criticizing China. I consider myself leftist and the amount of censorship the tank triad do to ensure China numba wan is mind numbing.
I’ve been told by then that China isn’t authoritarian And China has more freedom of speech than western countries… They banned me. Lol
Who are the tank triad?
Lemmy.ml Lemmygrad Hexbear
Basically the 3 far left instances that will enforce the discourse to be Marxist and anti-west.
Most instances are defederated from the latter two but not the first because that instance is run by the main Lemmy devs (who are communists)
And not in a productive way, either. Once in a while I see a couple hexbear users in a thread, so I’m guessing crossposts happen. But their comments are mostly just name-calling and shitting on liberals.
And never, ever criticizing the Right. These people cheer for Trump more than the fucking MAGA crowd.
Not even communists. I have had communists as friends during my grad and undergrad. Tank triad are a worser kind. They actively hinders any discussion against China. Tianenmen? Never happened. Mao’s genocide? western propaganda. Chinese imperialism in Tibet? China reclaiming its historical boundaries. Basically China and USSR can never do anything wrong. If they did, its western propaganda.
Also why cant they defederate from lemmy.ml? That should be technically possible as the code is open source and can be fetched easily to run an instance?
Anyone can defederate from .ml but they have a lot of users being the dev run site, so many don’t. Or at least that’s the reason lemmy.world has given in the past about why they have don’t federate with hexbear and lemmygrad but still do with ml
They’re not Marxists sadly, they’re worse.
They’re Stalinists who want authoritarianism.
Marx wouldn’t have condoned having a dictator/Tzar
Is “far left” an accurate description? They are not really what I consider “left” at all.
They are the actual far left. Horseshoe theory is bs.
In contrast, Antifa is left. US democratic party are right. Canadian liberals are centrist.
Please explain what qualities they demonstrate that make them leftward.
Not really. They give some lip service to communist dogma, but they really only have a big hard on for totalitarianism.
It's pretty absurd in 2025 to get high on late 1980s Comintern propaganda, but here they are 🤷
I’m not super up to date with terminology but I wouldn’t call them far-left. I believe authoritarianism is right wing ideology.
Play Domjot?
Block is useless on lemmy. They can still cause a nuisance. Just becuase you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there…
The point of my post is protecting one’s own mental health. I’m not here to police the Fediverse. Report people if it’s warranted, block if they’re a source of stress or make the place unenjoyable.
It’s nice not having to look at Blaze or some of the other trolls at least.
Make sure to also report the people you see being toxic, astroturfing, or downright attacking users. Many instances have policies against this and reporting them will increase the likelihood they’ll be dealt with, in some cases permanently.
This is something that should be discussed more since blocking is not a moderation function that makes the platform better, it’s a tool for people to pretend the problems don’t exist. I’m not a fan of pretending issues don’t exist, especially since I’m a mod and that would be insanely counter-productive.
Oh, yeah, that goes without saying. Report anyone whose behavior warrants it. I’m just mainly reminding people that blocking can be a way to take control of your experience. It took me a while to fully appreciate the block button and get over my FOMO (in the earlier days of Lemmy, blocking even a few people would cut down the amount of content drastically; thankfully that’s no longer the case).
Semi-specific (but still intentionally vague) example for “block” candidates are some accounts that even the mods are like “Look, I don’t like them either, but they’re not breaking any rules”. But, in general, just don’t be afraid to block what or whoever stresses you out.
Filters are nice too, if you’re here for escapism rather than news.
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/7d4c31c9-433e-49dd-bce5-a5ccdfc53460.jpeg">
Your filter list is very similar to mine. Makes a hell of a positive change.
I’m only here for politics about to put “puppy” on my filter
Better put owl and cat on there too while you’re at it
honestly too much cute shit weirdly ruins it, like loops is all peoples pets and im over it
Currently, only lemmy apps support keyword filtering. But on lemmy 1.0 we’re going to get proper keyword filters :DDDD
github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/5263
Wait, were not even on 1.0 yet?
Nope. Latest version is 1.19.11 but next should be 1.0
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/fc76b5f8-04bd-4468-8cbd-02757f2e72af.jpeg">
Musk agree with this, filters work wonders.
How do you do this - I think I need this
I tried filters on other platforms, the results weren’t that good. Yes, you blocked a word, but people often use images with text for some reason, and filters don’t work with them.
I’ve blocked communities and instances that don’t speak English, ones that have absurd ideological basis (anarchy supporters), and occasionally people who just say really dumb things, a lot.
I vastly prefer encouraging blocking over censorship/moderation. If someone is being an asshole, having the ability to say it, vent those feelings for a moment, then readjust is a catharsis that’s been nearly outlawed especially on platforms
onlike TikTok.Obviously not everything should be permitted and everything has its limits, but the internet seems to over correct things into a passionless husk of forced friendliness. To shove people into forming a facade that feels like a shrinking cage. Sterile.
Curating my own experience has been invaluable and I highly encourage it.
Blocked for calling anarchists absurd.
That is a dumb take and you could look it up on Wikipedia if you cared and iota to read many influential anarchist authors e.g. Kropotkin or Grabber, but trying to prove wrong every wrong person on the internet I’d never have time for myself so I’m moving on.
Obligatory this isn’t an airport you don’t have to announce your departure joke.
I’ve never shyed away from arguing with anarchists but this is already resolved so thank you? The enlightened anarchist simply has no time for the meager law loving peasants.
I am not a community but can you please add me to your list
This wasn’t an open invitation for everyone to out themselves but sure, take care.
Is it the people that are toxic? Or is it the world or a living in right now?
toxic people made the world toxic which in turn made more people toxic
I never thought I needed to block any user, because, you know, I’m a big kid and I can handle any of the dirty words. Turns out, there are just reavers out there in space with their cores exposed just letting the hatred and radiation wash over them. I have all this empathy and I know they were once people and maybe they can be redeemed, but no. They are reavers. Block and move on with caution.
Thanks for reminding the people arguing with me, personally im going to just let them deal with me
I have blocked 264 users, 9 communities and 4 instances and it’s made Lemmy much better for me toxicity wise. Whenever a debate gets toxic or someone starts just insulting or discussing in bad faith or I just get a bad vibe from them - I block.
You’ve been here for year and blocked 264 people, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but ever consider the problem is not the people you block? I think i’ve legitimately blocked maybe 20 people in my whole entire online life (I’m almost 40), most of it spent on platforms like Reddit.
But then I have a high aversion for echo chambers and only block obvious trolls, mostly to keep them from blowing up my notifications. I feel it’s much better to just not give random strangers on the internet the power to actually affect your mood.
Blocking them actually is removing their ability to affect your mood 😌
<img alt="" src="https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/2063501a-2d48-4e19-a821-ab8b8fbd5654.jpeg">
I’m with you in spirit if not numbers. My experience with hexbear users led me to blocking the whole instance, and I regularly block people I don’t even converse with based on how they treat other users or other topics. If someone has such a bad take on topic A, I don’t care about their possible opinions on topic B and C in the future.
I get the argument of echo chamber isolation, but most of the things I’m willing to block people over are also things that I won’t be changing my mind about because of a forum post.
By all means, use the block feature to remove stressors if it helps.
For me personally, unless someone is actively haranguing me in DMs I’d rather not block them. Sure people can place comments that get me riled up. Or sometimes they seem downright hostile. Maybe they’re having a bad day, you can’t say. But it goes both ways, if I’m tired or having a bad day I could be misinterpreting people’s comments and blocking them for no reason.
If a comment is so bad/rude it becomes rule-breaking I’d rather report it and have a moderator tell them off, it might be a valuable lesson for them or if they are repeat offenders the mods can dish out appropriate punishment. This keeps the instance and community in question healthy.
We really, REALLY need to de-stigmatize blocking people. Bad-faith concern trolls have successfully convinced people that “choosing not to interact with someone” is akin to censorship and also bad for us because what do you MEAN you don’t want to be disrespected by a complete stranger? Are you creating an echo chamber by preferring to be with people who are nice to you?!?!?!?
Like. No. Fuck off. That’s not how it works in real life. We’re not friends. We’re not even co-workers for me to be stuck having to be polite to you even if you’re an asshole.
You’re a complete stranger and you’re saying rude shit at me (or even at other people with me bearing witness), at best I’ll walk away because I don’t need that shit, at worst I’ll call you a wanker and hit you in the face.