Samuel
@samuel.fm
it’s goofy but you could do softblocks via an “antifollow” record. is that a terrible idea (I get the sense that people use it as a “gentle” way to nudge an annoying person away but a record is quite visible for someone being neurotic about it)
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Samuel
yeah my primary worry is that it would actually make things even worse. at least when someone watches their blocks they can’t then ping you about it
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stellz
ok but that ping is actually a really useful social signal that says you should just block them
1 14
ǝuuɐſ
a blockchain record that says "im not owned! im not owned!!", i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob
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Bossett
in a world where people subscribe to their block notifs, not sure that you're going to get away with being less visible even if you did it with a block/unblock action so first you need a "mute notifications" record...
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v buckenham
a nice thing about soft blocking is that it isn't persistent but a one time event. although I guess you could do the same with the anti follow record? although yes, the *most* characteristic thing about it is deniability. have you considered making your protocol less reliable?
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Grace
I think that’s the most straightforward way to do it, iirc it was suggested on the GitHub issue on softblocks
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Grace
That issue thread is such a blackpill on open source development, comment after comment saying “here’s why this is a good idea” even though @pfrazee.com said it was a good idea in 2023
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Kuba Suder 🇵🇱🇺🇦
There's this fun GH issue somewhere where people have been arguing to bump up the character limit to 500, with dozens and dozens of comments that are still being added now and then… 😅
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jack
tbf i support this one now.. at first i didn't but it's annoying when threads and mastodon are at 500 and i have to limit them both by 200 just to fit bluesky although that's a topic for a diff time... and i don't use threads *that* much rn compared to bsky anyway
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Laurens
drawing this to its logical conclusion is that every app should be like picosky during its 12 character era
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Tyler Fisher
i’ve thought about building a yelp-for-atproto but you can only communicate like dark souls/elden ring: pre-determined phrases.
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1 more reply
jack
OH that’s why twitter blue checks can write 25,000 characters 83x more annoying 🙃
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Xan López
And give a competitive advantage to Mastodon? Over my dead body sir. (Actually, maybe a good idea, not sure)
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Grace
It's not even bike shedding in the usual sense, it's more like people saying "yes, we should build the bike shed" over and over
1
Metaflame
A related thing that makes non-removable follows also annoying is that (IIRC?) they count towards the follower total even if you block the account. I assume that even an antifollow would have the same issue? I'm mainly annoyed that my follower count is artificially increased by spam follows.
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Metaflame
you also need to pair up follows and antifollows, since the latter only negates an existing follow previously, I had already asked about why this isn't the case with blocks (why aren't blocked follows just subtracted?), but it would apparently be much more involved
1
Eli Mallon
And then surely an equivalent anti-like? I dunno, feels like that way lies madness to me, but undeniably the follow removers seem to love it
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dame
it's all just a social construct that provides psychological benefit
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Michael Druker 🇨🇦
I really feel like a mechanism saying “I need a break from you interacting with me for a while” that stops short of a block would be very useful. I.e. a version of this that also prevents engagement. IMHO nuclear blocks get used too much, and better tools could reduce people’s need for that
3
david
Basically once you follow enough people you only need the “follow” and “random from follows” feeds, and if you don’t like someone’s posts, just unfollow them. I think people are just obsessed with thought policing. Blocking is needed for dv victims, etc. but otherwise just unfollow 🤔
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david
Combine that with an option such that only people that follow you (which you approved) or you follow can reply to your posts and there you are.
1
Everett Bogue 🔵
This can get solved when atproto implements clientside encrypted messaging. I send myself a private message saying that I'm muting a user. No one knows but me and my app, as only the encrypted message is saved to the PDS. Bookmarks and drafts could be done this way too.
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eris
I'm not entirely sure what the point is in soft blocking and why it would be used over regular blocking. surely some of these annoying people would eventually create a troll's appview that doesn't respect these records
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kiri 🌱🌃
making it imposible to refollow might not be desired i guess you could have it neutralize one specific follow record?