Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 506 posts

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

#411

Post by cm2187 »

cameldrv wrote: post #142

Makes sense given the current financials. The way you make money in social media is to get people pissed off and arguing with each other. Preventing someone from seeing things that make them mad is just leaving money on the table that they can't afford anymore.

I left facebook because it became a cesspool of memes and toxic political opinions about 8 years ago, and so did everyone I know. I never used twitter but I can certainly attest that you will bleed users if you push that, and probably users with higher earning powers (more valuable to advertisers).

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

#413

Post by slg »

virgilp wrote: post #398
slg wrote: post #337

It says a lot about the HN community that the overwhelming majority of people here seemingly emphasize with the person being blocked rather than the person doing the blocking.

It says that the HN community is more rational than most? It's not about empathy, it's about common sense - you can't prevent someone from seeing your PUBLIC posts just by blocking their account... at most you can make it slightly more inconvenient.

A block function is the online equivalent of a restraining order. Imagine telling a victim of abuse that restraining orders aren’t rational. It doesn’t have to be foolproof to provide a real benefit.

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

#414

Post by beaglesss »

starspangled wrote: post #397
Seattle3503 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found in some communities the most caustic, snappy, and prolific commentors will block you the moment you disagree with them. The result is that everyone who disagrees with them is eventually blocked, and their snappy comments sit at the top of threads, uncontested.

On reddit, people use it to pretend to "win" arguments by appearing to get the last word (post a reply then immediately block).

It's the same on HN. If you say something controversial with a conclusion people dislike but debatable it will be disproven then downvoted. If the undesirable comment can be greyed out or the writer discredited they'll allow the comment to stand, smugly declaring a public victory.

However if it can't be disproven and you actually convince some people, it will be flagged. And maybe even some people stalk your account and bait you into getting frustrated and then getting your account nuked.

This is why 4chan etc are more intellectually honest imo as you can't nearly as easily censor or rule ban someone who makes a vile but persuasive argument.

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

#415

Post by troad »

kortilla wrote: post #393
troad wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no site more perfectly suited to turning people off the fundamental democratic value of free speech than Elon Musk's Twitter, circa 2024. The front page is just brazen anti-Semitism and racism at this point. And no, I am not referring to some reasoned debate of the Gaza War or social issues, I mean literal memes with hook-nosed men, their captions explicitly referring to the Protocols of the Elder of Zion. I…

>If Gen Z or their successors kill the First Amendment, it will be because Elon groomed them to think that this deluge of darkness is what free speech is all about. It is not. Cut the melodrama. This isn’t the first time there has been racism on the Internet. MySpace and then Facebook were both loaded with it and 4chan has been there all along. The Internet in the late 2000s was far less filtered than X today. You’re…

Bull. You can't lie to me about ordinary Internet in the 2000s, because I was there.

For context, this is a sampling of literal front page content from Twitter, on an new account with no cookies or follows, via a VPN, from a day in late August when I ran this little experiment:

- A meme of a dark-skinned man saying 'You never wuz been judged by yo skeen cola' and a white man replying 'How are you in college?'

- 'The Mirror Test: White Babies Recognize Themselves at 15 Months, Black Children Not Until 6 Years (Science Video)', with the caption: 'I'm guessing this is what a 30 point higher IQ average does'

- A still from a Hilter speech, Nazi flag visisble in the background, caption 'the world owes this man an apology'

- An image of "Fr. Leonard Feeny" with the quote 'Having a television in your home is like having a Jew in your living room'.

- A meme of Sully from Monsters Inc. smiling, with the caption 'Mfs entering heaven when they see Adolf'

Again, I want to stress this, this is the Twitter front page. To suggest that Facebook and MySpace were suggesting content anywhere near this revolting to average accounts on Facebook or MySpace is just a lie. They were not. Did racist content exist somewhere in the dark recesses of those websites? Probably. Was it being suggested to the average person within thirty seconds of opening the equivalent to the front page? Absolutely not.

Convincing the average American that ordinary moderation of content like the above is 'extreme censorship' is how you get Americans who decide they're actually OK with that.

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

#416

Post by slg »

tuhriel wrote: post #410
slg wrote: post #337

It says a lot about the HN community that the overwhelming majority of people here seemingly emphasize with the person being blocked rather than the person doing the blocking.

I see what you are suggesting here, I see the same trend but I think the reason why is not the one you are implying. The HN community, in most topics, is against censoring, echo chambers and that free speech doesn't mean you can say anything without being called out. IMHO there are two impacted groups here: a) the ones who block everything and everyone that doesn't agree with them (on a public platform) b) the ones w…

> The problem with blocking is, it doesn't solve the problem

You’re right it doesn’t solve the problem, but the people who experience this problem say it helps and now those people are losing that help.

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

#417

Post by crimsoneer »

kortilla wrote: post #393
troad wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no site more perfectly suited to turning people off the fundamental democratic value of free speech than Elon Musk's Twitter, circa 2024. The front page is just brazen anti-Semitism and racism at this point. And no, I am not referring to some reasoned debate of the Gaza War or social issues, I mean literal memes with hook-nosed men, their captions explicitly referring to the Protocols of the Elder of Zion. I…

>If Gen Z or their successors kill the First Amendment, it will be because Elon groomed them to think that this deluge of darkness is what free speech is all about. It is not. Cut the melodrama. This isn’t the first time there has been racism on the Internet. MySpace and then Facebook were both loaded with it and 4chan has been there all along. The Internet in the late 2000s was far less filtered than X today. You’re…

Only Americans could see social media a decade ago and think that is extreme censorship

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

#418

Post by beaglesss »

slg wrote: post #413
virgilp wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says that the HN community is more rational than most? It's not about empathy, it's about common sense - you can't prevent someone from seeing your PUBLIC posts just by blocking their account... at most you can make it slightly more inconvenient.

A block function is the online equivalent of a restraining order. Imagine telling a victim of abuse that restraining orders aren’t rational. It doesn’t have to be foolproof to provide a real benefit.

Restraining orders convey dubious benefits and arguably produce more harm than good.

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

#419

Post by enaaem »

throwaway290 wrote: post #305
zzo38computer wrote: post #278

I do not use The X Formerly Known As Twitter, but if I write a message that is intended to be public (regardless of what service it is on), I would intend that people I had blocked are still able to see the message (and make copies of it) if they wish; I would block them because I don't want to see their messages and I do not want to allow them to send messages to me. I would also not want the number of users who blo…

> X Formerly Known As Twitter Xitter for short. > I would intend that people I had blocked are still able to see the message (and make copies of it) if they wish; I would block them because I don't want to see their messages and I do not want to allow them to send messages to me I don't. There are different reasons to block and musk only sees the political one. On personal level I may want to have a public account fo…

It’s simple. Don’t post anything personal on X. There are better platforms for that.

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

#420

Post by Sammi »

starspangled wrote: post #397
Seattle3503 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found in some communities the most caustic, snappy, and prolific commentors will block you the moment you disagree with them. The result is that everyone who disagrees with them is eventually blocked, and their snappy comments sit at the top of threads, uncontested.

On reddit, people use it to pretend to "win" arguments by appearing to get the last word (post a reply then immediately block).

Oooooooooooohhh. This is how they do that. This is absolutely rampant on Reddit and Twitter.

So many argumentative and divisive people who seem to get the last word all the time. Now I know what I'm looking at. They just answer and block. Makes me think even less of them.

Post reply on HN