At the very least, I don’t think OP deserves to be dragged like they were for what is to me a pretty reasonable take. In Lemmy, blocking someone acts like getting blocked on pretty much every platform, which is going to be confusing for many

I can agree that I understand the confusion and I also don’t think the OP deserves to get dragged for their initial post, but I think their opinion is fundamentally flawed and the reason they got dragged is mostly because they went in the comments trying to defend their opinion. The problem is that the term “Social Media” has gotten so hackneyed that multiple different things are all called Social Media and the rules of the most common version are expected in the others.

Growing up Social Media referred to Social Networks which are user-centric platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace (I guess potentially TikTok) where you create an account which is central to your experience on the website. Connections on these platforms are made through creating individual friends lists and following specific users which makes it super easy to block someone in the manner described. Now basically everything is called Social Media, including forums and image boards. On an image board or forum you might have to create an account, but the experience was more defined by going through an index of posts not connected to your account. Places like Digg, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, 4chan, and any random ass forum functioned pretty similarly to how blocking works on Lemmy. In most cases the blocked user can still see any public posts you make; they may not be able to search for your posts within their account or respond to your messages directly, but they typically could still see your posts and respond to other people in a thread (even your own). The only exception to this is if they posted on a forum (or subreddit/instance/board/blog) you moderated or otherwise controlled. In some cases Social Networks and image boards are similar, if you run a blog on Tumblr it functions more like a Social Network but if you only browse other people’s public blogs then it functions like an image board

The whole argument is basically “Why don’t forums work like social networks?”

Looking at the post you reference the person you talked to is a transgender person who moderates both LGBTQ+ and Transfem in Lemmy.blahaj.zone, they provide more than enough evidence of their minority status, but that wasn’t really needed. The question was what group was being harassed and thus this interaction would imply that the LGBTQ community is being harassed on Lemmy.

What I feel like you missed in your previous discussion is that the other person was talking about privacy in the context of being outed in the real world. The harassment being referred to was in the context of your real life identity being revealed or connected to your online conversation.

There’s no such thing. They are mutually exclusive. Take queer folk for example. We need privacy to be able to talk about our experiences without outing ourselves to the world. It’s especially important for queer kids, and folk that are still in the closet. If they don’t have privacy, they can’t be part of the community, because they open themselves to recognition and harassment in offline spaces.

Under this context they are looking for a feature similar to how Facebook (at least previously) allowed you to pick who could see your post as you were posting it. That way you could individually disallow specific people or groups from seeing them.

This doesn’t imply that the issue is that someone is being harassed on Lemmy and thus we need better blocking options. It’s really only an issue for someone who wants to dox themselves and still have private conversations, in which case Lemmy and most online forums can’t accomplish that natively across all instances/subreddits/groups. The only solution is to have a private instance with vetting and heavy moderation. If you don’t dox yourself you can generally avoid the whole issue here.

Based on this I think you’re making a different argument than what the block feature is or ever could be.

I’m sorry, but I feel like you need to support the statement “This comes from discussions I’ve had with minorities about the harassment they face on Lemmy and mastodon” a bit more. Your whole argument for limiting the speech of others is predicated on this statement.

I’m not saying that minorities couldn’t face harassment on Lemmy, but Lemmy is by far the most liberal and minority supportive online forum I have ever experienced. Part of the reason Lemmy is so niche is because it doesn’t have the mainstream attention other platforms have and is heavily moderated.

If you are engaging in an instance where harassment is occurring the moderators generally ban the person quickly. If the moderators of that instance aren’t doing their job people generally leave and the instance dies from lack of content (there just aren’t that many people on Lemmy). If someone follows you from a different instance to another the current instance moderators will likely ban them even if the one you met them on doesn’t. Finally, if they are direct messaging you you can block them, they can continue to message you but you won’t see their messages and neither will anyone else.

What minority group have you talked with that are receiving harassment and what extra protections were needed that aren’t already here?

A lot of people are calling this a bailout for Elon, but in reality it would be a seizure. Elon doesn’t want to let go of Starlink and the US likely wouldn’t pay him what it’s worth to take it over.

What people seem to be missing is the precedent this would set. It’s all well and good when we empower the office of the president to seize a private company we don’t like, but after we give them that power what’s to stop them from seizing other businesses?

XYZ company refuses to get rid of their DEI policy because the shareholders voted to keep it? Well now the orange man can seize it.

Let’s not forget that previously it took 2/3rd majority to confirm presidential appointments, but the Senate under Obama decided to change that rule to 50% to get past Republican objections. The result of this is all these shit appointments Trump has passed with 51% of the Senate, none of them would have gotten by if the Democrats hadn’t made a precedent for changing the rules.

New phone, who dis?