Comment by MaximilianKohler on 18/01/2022 at 21:30 UTC

19 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)

View submission: Previewing Upcoming Changes to Blocking

Limitations on mass blocking comes nowhere near solving the myriad of problems with this.

I could go around spreading lies about a user and the user would never be able to know or respond.
I could also go around spreading lies in general and then block the select people with the knowledge and time to debunk me.
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.
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.

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.

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.

Comment by MaximilianKohler on 18/01/2022 at 21:30 UTC

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