I went on a blocking spree several weeks ago, and suddenly, most of the conversations on the topic were magically allowed to have nuance. Only had to block 8 or 9 instigators who were apparently the ones derailing every conversation.
I have a block list of about 40 thats taken a year to curate, and yes, Lemmy has been absolutely fantastic since I filled it out. It’s like wearing noise canceling headphones.
Right?! I almost gave up 6 months in but getting over my hesitation to just block and move on was a game changer.
My only problem with that, are that those instigators are still here, instigating others. I’d love to see a site feature like 4chan has, where they geolocate IP addresses and put a flag next to your user name. I know it can be bypassed with a VPN, but I’d at least like these little shits to at least have to use one. Rack up the flags on the username too – If the IP address changes from Russia, to USA, put both flags on the user. Set a super-cookie on browsers that tracks alt-accounts and connects them on the back-end, etc.
I believe in anonymity, but I don’t believe in people making up identities and alt accounts, etc in order to ‘dogpile’ their own conversations in order to make it look like more people agree with them than actually do.
I just found out that my boss does this shit. He’s got 3 facebook identities so when he’s losing an argument, he jumps on “Richard” or “David” to dogpile the conversation and make it look like more people agree with him on internet arguments.
Spend enough time in the comments and you’ll notice a handful of “usual suspects” sticking out. So I’ll usually look at their profiles to see their history. If a pattern emerges, block them.
They’re usually ones that immediately jump to extremes, make bad faith comparisons right off the bat, or otherwise Godwin’s Law a comment thread between 0 and 1 replies in.
Genuine question: Is there a part of you that fears that by blocking dissenting voices, you may be reinforcing your filter bubble?
