I had to block a few users yesterday. Today, I noticed about ten notifications from users I’ve blocked—they replied to me, continued to make up lies about my heritage, and I continued to see their comments in my notifications.
It seems that the only effect of my blocking them is that I can no longer see their comments in context—although I am still notified of their harassment. This is quite the opposite effect from the one I was going for—I mean, I’m happy to spend less time engaging with them, but the block feature seems to be guaranteeing these bigots the “last word” and preventing me from even reporting them. They can then follow me anywhere on kbin and continue to harass me, the block function is only stopping me from doing anything about it.
At least one of these users is on the same instance as I am, kbin.social.
Why doesn’t blocking work?
Yeah, Mastodon has separate block and mute functions. Somebody just accused me of “playing the underdog card” for saying that babies should have their heads attached to their necks, in a whole long chain of comments where he frequently mischaracterized my points, so yes, I blocked him.
well, multiple reddit accounts to get around a block or ban were specifically forbidden, but you’re right, it’s possible.
the thing you’re still confused about is thinking that it’s something everybody does the second they get banned. There is a limit to the amount of work people actually end up doing to troll others on the internet. Some trolls have an iron will and are stubborn to no end; the vast majority will lose steam eventually and just go do something else.
If you set up your own instance just to troll people more effectively, and somehow manage to stay federated with your victims’ servers, you might just be a corner case.