18 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Feature timeline update: Opting out of being followed
what’s your thought process behind removing a bot from following you but not blocking them
The same rationale for not banning spammers but just sending them to spam classification and letting them get shadowbanned:
If they get any form of feedback that tells them that they're being stymied in their efforts, they'll spin up a fresh instance and Lather-Rinse-Repeat
Removal of a follower who then re-follows -- especially when this represents a cycle of behaviour -- is a metric which has been used previously by a social media site that features "Followers", as a signal of abuse and a signal of the preference of the victim.
Victims who are experiencing abuse and **in situations where there is no clear method to report that abuse** will often not seek escalation of that abuse and will maintain practices which they know will not trigger escalations by their abusers.
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Also: the sacrifice of an entire feature to mitigate the systematic abuse of a group whose goal is to make Reddit as a whole less useful and welcoming -- resulting in increasing isolation -- is a win for the people who undertook the systematic abuse (their goal was to increase the actual and perceived social isolation attached to using Reddit)
Comment by dmoneyyyyy at 09/08/2021 at 18:20 UTC
11 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Thank you very much for taking the time to write this up — this will be very helpful as we think through the use case of removal vs. blocking.