240 upvotes, 18 direct replies (showing 18)
View submission: Announcing Blocking Updates
Limitations on mass blocking comes nowhere near solving the myriad of problems with this.
There are accounts that go around spreading positive information about Monsanto, for example. It looks very convincing to the average person. There are very few people who know enough to potentially counter any of these types of users' claims. I know enough about one of the things they claimed to know that it was false. Thus, I don't believe any of their other claims. I said as much and shared the evidence.
There are a small amount of people who can do the same for the other claims they make. If that account simply blocks us handful of users they can spread their false information as much as they want.
There is another political sub I follow, and recently there is a single propaganda account taking it over completely. I've downvoted this account over a hundred times in a couple months, and I've made comments criticizing them. They could easily true block me and thus silence any critics.
Similarly, there are extremely corrupt, manipulative mods who post links/propaganda to numerous subs. This would give them censorship power in all those subs.
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This change will drastically worsen the misinformation and echo-chamber problems reddit already is drowning in. Reddit's already become a place where nothing can be trusted due to all kinds of heavy manipulation of content. This makes the existing problems so much worse.
This is either an incredibly poorly thought out change, or a horribly corrupt one that is basically giving special interest groups the ability to manipulate this site even more.
I am so appalled at what reddit has become.
Comment by bzzpop at 11/02/2022 at 03:22 UTC*
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I also don’t think it’s implemented correctly… or the implementation is correct but the marketed functionality is wrong. When a user true blocks you, it prevents you from interacting with any content in a thread.
Taking the following as an example:
UserA comment
— UserB replying to UserA
——UserC replying to UserB
— UserD
If UserA decides to true block UserB, UserB would not be able to reply to anything said by UserC or UserD above.
This is a REALLY wild way to implement this. Especially given the branching, nested nature of Reddit conversations.
Admins here said that the UserA’s content would show up to UserB as deleted. But evidently that’s not the case.
Comment by elizabethptp at 09/02/2022 at 15:37 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is the stupidest decision! The other day someone commented on a post (I’ve since deleted) and then blocked me so I couldn’t respond.
I felt the need to delete my post that was getting (mostly) really kind feedback (not just for me but for a lot of people who might have had similar questions) because it really upset me to see an off-base & out of context conversation *on my post* unfold that I could do *nothing about*!
It’s amazing how a top comment can move the conversation, especially when there isn’t a counter point from the person people would expect to hear from. It makes it seem like they have no rebuttal.
I messaged the mods of that sub about it and they agreed this is a really troubling way to manufacture the appearance of a valid argument & said they’d be banning the user who did it. It sucks to think we have to rely on mods to ban accounts that abuse this, since they are *already* doing alllllll the other *unpaid* work of moderating a sub and that person can just turn around and make another account to do it again.
Really poorly thought out decision from Reddit.
Comment by skyesdow at 26/01/2022 at 18:58 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
You never explain what the problem with mass blocking is. If there are known users who make the experience here miserably why not block them?
Comment by RedditIsRealWack at 23/01/2022 at 18:58 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Spot on. I have already been blocked by some power users of /r/Scotland who are very pro-independence, and submit a lot of the articles.
I am against independence, and now I can't counter their lies in threads they create.
On top of that, the subreddit has a 'one post per event' rule, so I can't even make another submission on a given news article so I can give my views..
Comment by -Pointman- at 21/01/2022 at 04:32 UTC
-1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Did you SERIOUSLY just type all that?
You are guilty of just about everything you complain about in the above comment as a moderator.
Comment by [deleted] at 20/01/2022 at 17:09 UTC
0 upvotes, 1 direct replies
TBF, I don't think any of those points are things that weren't problems before the feature. power users control subs regardless due to how community circlejerks form and people have, are, and will continue to spread lies of topics in a wide variety of things in and outside your scope of knowledge.
I see these less as a tool to combat misinformation and more of a way for smaller scale users who casually use the sub to better block out persistent users. You can't really solve the problems you highlighted without having a full time paid staff fact checking everything. And reddit has never shown interest in this
Comment by existentialgoof at 19/01/2022 at 22:31 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is so horribly conceived of. To me, it seems to be following on from the trend where everything has to pander towards the most sensitive and the most intolerant. It's absolutely ripe for abuse, and the idea itself is anathema to what the site used to stand for. If someone is so sensitive that they don't like my opinions, then that's fine, they can block me and I'm not going to keep responding to their comments even in the knowledge that they cannot be read. But why do they have the right to limit what I'm allowed to read, when they probably blocked me in the first place just because they couldn't stand reading an opposing viewpoint to what they believe, well expressed?
Comment by Rickfernello at 19/01/2022 at 12:41 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I agree. Although the intention is good, it's bad for Reddit as a platform.
Comment by [deleted] at 19/01/2022 at 09:33 UTC*
2 upvotes, 2 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by TSPhoenix at 19/01/2022 at 04:05 UTC
10 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Well put. This problem is bigger than just bad actors. A specific user comes to mind who makes a new account every year.
I upvoted their 2021 account over 200 times, they do good writeups and post lots of relevant articles to the subreddits they frequent (which I'd no longer be able to see under the new system making reddit useless to me as a news source), but they're also a zealot that posts a lot of comments that are flat out wrong, completely off-topic, etc... and you see the same handful of users correcting them each time. Under this new system they just start a new account, carry their banlist across and they can talk about all these topics unchecked.
It was already bad enough when their annual account deletion removed all the news stories they posted from being accessed via top posts/searches, if you wanted to look at the top stories from the last year there are now gaping holes in it because of how reddit allows users to take their ball and go home, but this change would mean some people would never even see that news in the first place.
I understand the need for mechanisms to protect users from harassment, but enabling mass harassment and manipulation in order to stop individual cases of harassment is treating the symptom and not the cause. I can't see this being and overall net positive for the most common targets of harassment on this site.
Comment by Jim_Smith_1973 at 19/01/2022 at 01:12 UTC
50 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Very soon there will be zero disagreement on reddit. Any time anyone says anything there will only be people agreeing with them.
This is their goal. Web advertising does better in positive environments. Same reason Facebook has never implemented a "dislike" button despite huge demand for it.
Comment by Tensuke at 19/01/2022 at 01:00 UTC
11 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Yes, this is honestly one of the worst changes in Reddit history imo. It will be abused immediately, and misinformation (real misinformation, not mIsInFoRmAtIoN) will be even more rampant.
Comment by brbposting at 19/01/2022 at 00:10 UTC
13 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is so obviously an enormous problem and the resources are not in place to look for it. Imagine how difficult it would be to prevent this based on anti-astroturfing success thus!
Do the benefits outweigh this huge risk?
Comment by semi-confusticated at 18/01/2022 at 22:31 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
They could easily true block me and thus silence any critics.
I suppose you could try to turn the tables on them by blocking the propaganda account first, so then they can't see your critiques, but that line of action seems kind of questionable too. That sort of thing could make *your* account look like a harasser abusing the block feature, or else it could cause an arms race to see who blocks who first. I'm not sure what the solution is here
Comment by mmmmmmBacon12345 at 18/01/2022 at 22:12 UTC
-12 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Lets start with the most important thing
This is a big improvement and an important step towards letting people get out of targeted harassment
This is actually a block instead of whatever Reddit had implemented before that let someone continue interacting with your content without you knowing. The last update to make it so blocked users were just collapsed was real bad, it made it impossible to block harassers
Is it perfect? No, but you seem to have constructed a bunch of corner case strawmen while ignoring that yeah, there fundamentally has to be asymmetric knowledge since the *goal* of blocking users is to create asymmetric knowledge. Its not a bug, its a feature.
And this feature finally has the capability to do what it was supposed to be doing for years
I could go around spreading lies about a user and the user would never be able to know or respond.
Ya know, until someone not blocked tags them in a response, then they can just hop to incognito and see the comments or use something like ceddit. Relatively unlikely, and trivial for a user to find. Next!
I could also go around spreading lies in general and then block the select people with the knowledge and time to debunk me.
You can go around doing that anyway. It takes more effort to debunk a conspiracy than to spread one so this is a losing game even if they can try to follow you around and attempt to debunk it. Not a novel issue, will always be a problem, but this does resolve the people who go around "debunking" "lies" aka just harassing people for their agenda.
It enables power users who submit a lot of content to basically become mods of a ton of different subs themselves. They can/will now block anyone who says anything they don't like. Very soon there will be zero disagreement on reddit. Any time anyone says anything there will only be people agreeing with them.
Wut? They could just create their own subs and be mods that way, its less work than trying to ban huge swaths of users. They were also making it so mods could see all content in their subs
It enables bad actors to completely privatize their actions/behavior in ways I don't even want to mention since I don't want to help them do it.
Mmmm yes, there will be nefarious actors doing unspeakable nefarious things! See the second point above, its impossible to debunk this even if I had time
Comment by Jsnooots at 18/01/2022 at 22:07 UTC
21 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Well said, I only thought of half of the possible abuses that you listed..
Comment by sweetalkersweetalker at 18/01/2022 at 21:55 UTC
49 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Yep. This change was not well thought out and will cause so many new problems
Comment by HorselickerYOLO at 18/01/2022 at 21:55 UTC
8 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Well, they way it worked before led to a lot of harassment, especially for women. I do agree with your comment but I wonder what the best way to balance the two is.