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Twitter/X will let people you've blocked see your posts

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Re: Twitter/X will let people you've blocked see your posts

#171

Post by celdon25 »

viraptor wrote: post #53
nicexe wrote: post #46

I always thought this was a stupid restriction. You can't view the post while authenticated but you can view the post while unauthenticated.

It provides friction for further misbehaving. Imagine you blocked someone who has serious issues with people who #foobar. It's better for you if they can't easily find you and repost your content to their community who also hate #foobar. It's not perfect, but the friction helps prevent drive-by bad behaviour.

No it doesn't. The people who are malicious about it will be using multiple accounts. The block button doesn't stop them. If anything, it provides them ammunition to go "See, this person is a sensitive one, let's add them to the list".

Either your posts are public or they're not. There's a pretty clear distinction between the two, and anyone who thinks otherwise is sorely mistaken. The risk of people re-posting your content is a natural consequence of your aspirations to be popular on social media, and we shouldn't be giving people a false sense of security.

Re: Twitter/X will let people you've blocked see your posts

#172

Post by johnnyo »

dangerwill wrote: post #138

My bet for the real reason for this is that it has been widely reported that Twitter artificially boosts Elon's account specifically. Many people noticed when they did this that his posts showed up in their feeds despite them not following his account. I bet this led to a massive wave of people blocking his account (it's as easy to block as it is to mute). And this population of users eventually got big enough for hi…

Based on my reading of the article, this change would not start showing you Elon’s tweets if you have him blocked.

What it would do is allow Elon’s feed to show everyone, and not have holes in it from people who have blocked him.

Re: Twitter/X will let people you've blocked see your posts

#173

Post by homefree »

motohagiography wrote: post #166
homefree wrote: post #146

I'd like to be able to unblock people. An unblock all would be nice to get back to baseline. A while back I blocked everyone that followed a specific user that kept appearing in my feed (this was prior to the musk acquisition where you can view accounts you follow explicitly which is nice). This was around 50k people (it did make a noticeable difference). The unblock is broken though - I was able to unblock maybe 1k,…

when I used it instead of block lists I filtered based on emojis and that got rid of most of the noise. I left X because either I couldn't escape my filter bubble in spite of following some very diverse accounts, or people on it were really just that mid. it's optimized for engagement, so what you "like," and what keeps you there are probably not the same things. we complain about slop now, but the algos were the ori…

I think X is still really great and it's even better now that you can finally pay to have no ads (and verified means verified instead of 'friends of a twitter employee'.

It does require some effort to curate a worthwhile feed though (and you have to be mindful to not get sucked into junk/avoid the for you tab).

Re: Twitter/X will let people you've blocked see your posts

#174

Post by homefree »

OrigamiPastrami wrote: post #154
homefree wrote: post #146

I'd like to be able to unblock people. An unblock all would be nice to get back to baseline. A while back I blocked everyone that followed a specific user that kept appearing in my feed (this was prior to the musk acquisition where you can view accounts you follow explicitly which is nice). This was around 50k people (it did make a noticeable difference). The unblock is broken though - I was able to unblock maybe 1k,…

You blocked 50k people? Don't you have to block people one by one? How did you even do this?

There were API endpoints that worked at some point, made it easy to do.

Re: Twitter/X will let people you've blocked see your posts

#175

Post by orwin »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #147
bragr wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all issues as well, but brigading is absolutely a thing.

Just to be clear they still won't be able to interact with you after they're blocked. The only change is they can keep seeing your tweets directly in their account, as opposed to having to log out.

This I think is good. I don't really care about what is shown, because in my opinion, twitter discussions are rarely worth anything, but I get the point of 'more visibility = good'. I just dislike brigading. And I don't follow anything political on Twitter, I used to follow cybersec and US sports, still there you had brigading (and sometimes attacks got _really_ personal, like a bunch of people making dogwhistle comments about someone who criticized their favorite basketball player because he looks ashkenaz. I think he's a tv personality now btw).

Re: Twitter/X will let people you've blocked see your posts

#176

Post by chomp »

celdon25 wrote: post #171
viraptor wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It provides friction for further misbehaving. Imagine you blocked someone who has serious issues with people who #foobar. It's better for you if they can't easily find you and repost your content to their community who also hate #foobar. It's not perfect, but the friction helps prevent drive-by bad behaviour.

No it doesn't. The people who are malicious about it will be using multiple accounts. The block button doesn't stop them. If anything, it provides them ammunition to go "See, this person is a sensitive one, let's add them to the list". Either your posts are public or they're not. There's a pretty clear distinction between the two, and anyone who thinks otherwise is sorely mistaken. The risk of people re-posting your…

Yes it does and I can tell that you have never been piled on by followers of large accounts. Blocks aren’t perfect but they make a huge difference.

Re: Twitter/X will let people you've blocked see your posts

#177

Post by bigstrat2003 »

Jordrok wrote: post #44
amenhotep wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It's always been a stupid, petulant implementation, and its widespread acceptance is confusing.

The point of blocking is to prevent harassment, no? Hiding the blocker's posts from the blockee puts up an additional barrier to interaction. Even if it can be circumvented, it still requires some effort and may dissuade the person from continuing the harassment. There is a reason why this is the standard implementation for almost every social media site, and petulance has nothing to do with it.

I would say that the point of blocking is to prevent someone from contacting you. Not to prevent harassment.

Re: Twitter/X will let people you've blocked see your posts

#179

Post by thaumasiotes »

nicexe wrote: post #46

I always thought this was a stupid restriction. You can't view the post while authenticated but you can view the post while unauthenticated.

The restriction isn't on them seeing your posts. It's on you seeing their posts. If you don't want them to see your posts, Twitter provides that functionality too. It just isn't called "blocking".

Re: Twitter/X will let people you've blocked see your posts

#180

Post by thaumasiotes »

dotnet00 wrote: post #151
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the opposite. People with serious issues (i.e. stalkers, trolls etc.) will continue following on a second account or proxy. Meanwhile regular accounts with legitimate criticisms (for example pointing out misinformation, calling out bias, and so on) get blocked by bad actors and those will not find them anymore and repost because they don't invest time in it. Blocking mainly prevents regular normal users from see…

Not to mention people attempting to slander others behind a block (so the person being slandered has no idea until the damage is already done), or temporarily unblocking to say something to someone, and then blocking again.

> Not to mention people attempting to slander others behind a block (so the person being slandered has no idea until the damage is already done)

I saw someone once post about their outrage over the practice of criticizing someone on Twitter without tagging the person you're criticizing in your tweet. ("Subtweeting.") Apparently the thinking goes that if anyone anywhere says something about you, you have the right to be notified.

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