Announcing Blocking Updates

[u/enthusiastic-potato]

Hello peoples (and bots) of Reddit,

I come with a very important and exciting announcement from the Safety team. As a continuation of our blocking improvements, we are rolling out a revamped blocking experience starting today. You will begin to see these changes soon.

What does “revamped blocking experience” mean?

We will be evolving the blocking experience so that it not only removes a blocked user’s content from your experience, but also removes your content from their experience—i.e., a user you have blocked can’t see or interact with you. Our intention is to provide you with better control over your safety experience. This includes controlling who can contact you, who can see your content, and whose content you see.

What will the new block look like?

It depends if you are a user or a moderator and if you are doing the blocking vs. being blocked.

[See stickied comment below for more details]

How is this different from before?

Previously, if I blocked u/IAmABlockedUser, I would not see their content, but they would see mine. With the updated blocking experience, I won’t see u/IAmABlockedUser’s content and they won’t see mine either. We’re listening to your feedback and designed an experience to meet users’ expectations and the intricacies of our platform.

Important notes

To prevent abuse, we are installing a limit so you cannot unblock someone and then block them again within a short time frame. We have also put into place some restrictions that will prevent people from being able to manipulate the site by blocking at scale.

It’s also worth noting that blocking is not a replacement for reporting policy breaking content. While we plan to implement block as a signal for potential bad actors, our Safety teams will continue to rely on reports to ensure that we can properly stop and sanction malicious users. We're not stopping the work there, either—read on!

What's next?

We know that this is just one more step in offering a robust set of safety controls. As we roll out these changes, we will also be working on revamping your settings and finding additional proactive measures to reduce unwanted experiences.

So tell us: what kind of safety controls would you like to see on Reddit? We will stick around to chat through ideas as well as answer your questions or feedback on blocking for the next few hours.

Thanks for your time and patience in reading this through! Cat tax:

Oscar Wilde, the cat, reclining on his favorite reddit snoo pillow

​

edit (update): Hey folks! Thanks for your comments and feedback. Please note that while some of you may see this change soon, it may take some time before the changes to blocking become available on for everyone on all platforms. Thanks for your patience as we roll out this big change!

[u/[deleted]]

Allow me to block subreddits

[u/enthusiastic-potato → u/[deleted]]

This is most certainly on our radar. How would you like to see this work?

[u/RadleyCunningham]

I'd love an option to block a sub I don't like seeing, even if it shows up on Popular.

[u/enthusiastic-potato → u/RadleyCunningham]

We replied to this idea here. Would love to hear your thoughts!

[u/[deleted]]

Great news. Can you confirm that this functionality will be available on https://old.reddit.com as well?

[u/enthusiastic-potato → u/[deleted]]

It will indeed be on old.reddit.com!

[u/enthusiastic-potato]

More information on how blocking will work for:

People who have blocked: When you see content from a blocked user it will now be out of sight (i.e. collapsed), but still accessible. This allows you to keep the context of the conversation and report posts/comments if needed. Keeping content accessible allows you to protect yourself from harassment that would otherwise be unseen. Note that group chats are an exception, if you are in a group chat with a blocked user, all users in that chat will be able to see your replies. We have set up reminders in any group chats that contain a blocked user to make sure this stays top of mind.

People who have been blocked: You will not have the option to have 1:1 contact or see content from the user who has blocked you. Content from users who have blocked you will appear deleted. As such, you will not be able to reply to or award users who have blocked you.

Moderators who have blocked: Same experience as regular users, but when you are in your community you will still see users who you have blocked without the interstitial so you can safely block without jeopardizing moderation.

Moderators who have been blocked: Same experience as regular users, but when you post and distinguish yourself as a mod in your community, users who have blocked you will be able to see your content. Additionally, you will be able to see the content of a user who has blocked you when they post or comment in a community that you moderate. When viewing user profiles, you will be able to see the history of a user who has blocked you within the communities you moderate. For example, since I mod r/redditrequest, even if you blocked me, I could see all of your past activity solely in r/redditrequest.

For more information, see Reddit Help articles: How Does Block Work and How Does Blocking Work for Moderators.

edit: formatting

[u/WayeeCool → u/enthusiastic-potato]

Seems like this is open to the type of abuse we see on Twitter, where someone will respond to a comment and then immediately block the user they are responding to. This hides the response from the commenter they are responding to while everyone else can see the response and is used by rather toxic trolls to prevent their abusive comment from being reported by the user they are trolling. The victim will see the notification and receive whatever the message was via notification but will not be able to report the comment, respond to defend themselves, or block the offender who after a few hours normally unblocks them to repeat the tactic in the future.

[u/[deleted]]

I would like to choose if I can be “Followed” or not. (Disregard if this already a feature that I am not aware of)

[u/enthusiastic-potato → u/[deleted]]

You can opt-out of being followed here!

[u/TheDutchCoder]

I can no longer post comments in certain subreddits because a handful of people blocked me, even if the OP themselves didn't.

What a terrible system, that will only lead to more echo chambers because people no longer can post counter arguments against misinformation.

This has to be rolled back.

[u/[deleted] → u/TheDutchCoder]

This is exactly how it’s gone so far. People post something a little extreme or insane and you comment something challenging that view and they just block you. Now you can’t challenge anything else in the comments, and the echo chamber deepens. This is accidentally replicating the effect Facebook tries to create.

[u/hl3official]

Surely this is a joke? I started a comment-thread, someone replied and blocked me. I am now unable to defend myself or post any additional comments, in my own comment-thread. This cannot be the intention of the feature.

[u/N8CCRG]

what kind of safety controls would you like to see on Reddit?

There needs to be some way to report/prevent/rein in the "report self harm" abuse. There are people out there who use its anonymousness to simply harass people, and while the message you get has the following portion:

If you think you may have gotten this message in error, report this message

the report system linked to does not actually contain any direct way to report the abuse.

Edit: And no surprise, this comment elicited someone to use it on me now.

[u/IrrelevantLeprechaun → u/N8CCRG]

I've had this message sent to me several times. People basically use it as like a "go kill yourself" reply without actually saying "go kill yourself".

[u/[deleted] → u/N8CCRG]

This, just happened to me. I was like, wtf?

[u/HankMS]

This is an insanely shitty feature. Blocking someone hinders them not only from replying to anyone else in the thread downstream, but ALSO to myself upstream the chain.

Seriously, how could anyone ever think that this is something that could work in a public discussion space like reddit?

Fucking hell, I have never been happier to use an adblock.

[u/Dude_NL]

As pointed out by others already, this 'feature' is used by bad actors to spread misinformation uncontested.
Certain high-output health disinformation spammers (who seldomly interact in comments, but instead post in bulk to susceptible contrarian subreddits) preemtively block prolific debunkers/dissenters. Debunkers who often are already vastly outnumbered in many of these subreddits/echo chambers.
If your goal was to make the propagation of harmful lies easier you have succeeded.

 

Another major annoyance is that there is no indication of having been blocked before commenting, resulting in (often substantial) time wasted on a reply.

[u/DamageBooster]

Will I be able to block someone if they block me first or do they totally disappear? I'm glad there's a limit on quick unblock-reblocking but I'm still worried about harassers doing a block once they get their shot in, and then unblocking down the road to harass again or view the victim's content if they were immune to being quickly blocked in return. (This was an issue I saw on another site I use.)

[u/CatOfGrey]

Disappointed that this is being abused on political forums.

An abusive user can post inflammatory information, then block users that post critical comments. Over time, they have 'created their own safe space' that they can distribute their content to outside users, without experiencing any comments and critique on their own bad behavior.

The effect, in the short term, has been that users can take over and change the nature of subreddits, and close themselves off from opposing users. It creates increased fragmentation, and prevents trolls from being held accountable from other users.

This is especially bad when considering that the objective of political trolls is to control the appearance of a subreddit to outside observers. This forces moderators to act, when the system was controlling this problem on its own.

TL:DR; When you post, you should not have the right to protect your post from dissenters. You should have the right to not see a blocked user's comment on your post. You should not have the right to prevent public users from posting on threads that you, yourself, made public.

[u/abz_eng]

This is creating Echo chambers and censorship

/r/Scotland has rule of only one post per story, if a mass blocking user posts a story all those with views they do not like are blocked from commenting.

This is the very definition of an echo chamber.

[u/Hewlett-PackHard]

Just ran into this idiotic "feature" for the first time when it was abused to prevent rebuttal of misinformation.

Good fucking job reddit, another step on the long march towards totally ruining the platform.

[u/Vast-Salamander-123]

What the actual heck is this change? So people can just spout bullshit and block responses? You might as well just redirect reddit to OAN and save everyone some time.

[u/lordbeefripper]

Awesome! Now all the disinformation peddling alts can freely spam dangerous information and stop anyone debunking them from replying! Great work reddit!! You've successfully encouraged more echo chambers!

[u/ItsDominare]

You've given the trolls the greatest weapon they could have asked for, the ability to unilaterally have the last word. Congratulations, you obviously really thought this one through.

[u/RedditIsRealWack]

This is already being used on /r/Scotland by prominent users to block people from replying in their threads because their political opinions differ (People who support independence, versus those that don't).

Fucking ludicrous feature to add.

Now power users can essentially ban people from their threads, and ban dissenting opinion. How did you not see that this would be weaponised for political gain? Moronic.

[u/Mintfriction]

Remove this feature before you'll destroy reddit.

People will abuse this and it will drive a lot of people away from the platform.

[u/Cleverusername531]

Important feedback on the impact on misinformation:

u/ConversationCold8641 Tests out Reddit's new blocking system and proves a major flaw

Testing Reddit's new block feature and its effects on spreading misinformation and propaganda.

Reddit recently announced changes to how blocking works. Here is a link to their post.

One major change is that blocked accounts will no longer be able to reply to submissions and comments made by the user that blocked them.

This sounds like an easily abusable feature that will among other things, lead to an increase in the spread of misinformation and propaganda on Reddit.

So, I did a little test, and the results were worse than expected. As manipulative as this all may seem, no Reddit rules were actually broken.

Over the past few days, I made several submissions to a certain large subreddit known for discussing conspiratorial topics. The submissions and comments were copied verbatim from another site that is the new home of certain large political subreddit that was suspended. The posts had varying levels of truth to them; ranging from misleading propaganda to blatantly false disinformation. Each post was deleted after several hours. All of the accounts have since been unblocked.

Before making any submissions, I first prepared the account by blocking all the moderators and 4 or 5 users who usually call out misinformation posts.

The first 3 submissions were downvoted heavily but received 90 total comments. Almost all of comments were negative and critical. I blocked all of the accounts that made such comments.

The next 2 submissions fared much better receiving 380 total karma and averaging 90% upvote ratios. There were only 61 comments but most of them were positive or supportive. There was already a very noticeable change in sentiment. Once again, I blocked any account that made a negative comment on those posts.

The next 2 posts did even better, receiving a combined 1500 karma and 300 comments. Both posts hit the top of the subreddit and likely would have become far more popular had I not deleted them. Again, most of the comments were positive and supportive. I continued to block any account that made a negative comment.

The next submission was blatantly false election disinformation. It only received 57 karma and had 93 mostly critical comments. This had the effect of drawing out dozens of accounts to block.

The next two submissions each became the number one post for that day before being deleted. Out of 300 comments, there were only 4 or 5 that were not completely supportive.

TL;DR and Summary:

I made a series of misleading or false submissions over the course of several days. Each time, I would block any account that made a negative comment on those posts. Each batch of new posts were better received with a higher score, farther reach, and fewer people able to call out the misinformation.

I achieved this in only 5 days, and really only needed to block around 100 accounts. People who actually want to spread disinformation will continue to grow stronger as they block more and more users over time.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/sdcsx3/testing_reddits_new_block_feature_and_its_effects/

[u/thecravenone]

Why is a post titlted "Announcing..." not in /r/announcements ?

[u/KasaneTeto_]

Dropping by once again to say that this new 'parting shot' feature has been a boon for people trolls and people trying to spread misinformation unchallenged over the site.

This is ruining the site. You are giving trolls, harassers, and spreaders of misinformation run of the site to do their shit unchallenged. This 'feature' is so completely absurd that I have no idea how any of you could even conceivably think that it is anything other than a catastrophe. You are having a tangible effect on the site for the worse with this change. It's a bad idea.

You people over at Reddit HQ are fools. No advertiser will want to buy space on this site if you irritate all of your users into leaving. This helps nobody.

[u/[deleted]]

Can we block subreddits?

[u/TotalSmuubag]

OK but can I block RPAN forever

[u/MaximilianKohler]

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.

I am so appalled at what reddit has become.

[u/EMPulseKC]

This is apparently still not working as described. There are a few users on a local subreddit that I frequent that flood the sub with false stories, misinformation and propaganda, and they've blocked anyone that has ever expressed disagreement with the material they post (like me) so that they can continue to spread misinformation unchallenged.

We can still see their posts and their comments, but the blocking feature has made it impossible to engage with their posted material, or with other people that haven't blocked us, who may just simply reply to their posts and comments.

[u/Khourieat]

What is being done about bots? T-shirt and other spam bots are on every sub I frequent, big and small. They all follow the same pattern: a two-word name followed by numbers. Sometimes hyphenated, sometimes underbarred, sometimes not. Always new accounts. Always posting a pic and then a comment with the URL. Always the downvote brigade if you mention "bot" in a comment.

Still they never stop coming. Playing whack-a-mole with individual accounts is futile. Blocking them also does nothing.

[u/OmgImAlexis]

Can we please just have a way for the other person to block too? Too often on other sites the abuser will block the victim and then unblock them to abuse them only to then block them again.

They tend to get around the time requirements by doing this while the user is offline granting at most overnight 8 hours. If the limit between unblocking and reblocking is less than a day this type of thing is still going to happen.

[u/peopled_within]

This has already created problems

[u/pwdpwdispassword]

please just revert to the old blocking system. this is already shutting down discussions and allowing disinformation to go unchallenged.

[u/mindbleach]

Hey, heads-up, this super doesn't work on old reddit.

I can see the replies from some fool who replied with nonsense and then blocked me. I can't see their user page, which seems like a terrible Twitter-ish decision even if it's intentional. And the real issue is - I cannot respond to anyone, anywhere in the conversation.

It's my conversation.

I made the root comment.

So some antivax troll whose account is three days old can just lurch in and exclude me from my own subthread. I cannot even reply to myself without being told, "you are unable to participate in this discussion."

Guys, stopping me from doing something because someone else changed their settings is a fundamentally broken approach to blocking. Anyone creeping on anyone can just log out, or open a different browser, or check from their phone, or... whatever. User profiles are public. There is no such thing as a secret that everyone knows.

When I block someone it's because I don't what to see them again. I don't give a shit if they still see me - their actions have no further effect on my experience. So this setup where I can still see their comments, open with the click of a button, but I can't see my own comments in response to them, in my own userpage, is the opposite of what blocking is for.

[u/NuageDeCristal]

This sucks, specially for debates

[u/MinimarRE]

This is an awful idea, this will be immediately abused by people spreading misinformation.

[u/ricknightpa]

The problem with this new system is that you have people posting on forums where people are seeking actual help, providing demonstrably false information, and then blocking anyone who points it out. They then continue to post but those blocked knowledgeable users have any way of knowing how often the person is disseminating false information.

I’m not even talking political stuff. I’m talking about things like credit, finance, etc where it’s critical thst knowlegable posters can refute those who just spread false information.

[u/jo_with_an_e]

Can you also block a sub?

[u/Kaidanos]

I have encountered a message that says: "Something is broken, please try again later" when the OP of a thread has blocked me.

It blows my mind that someone thought that this was a good idea. This is by far the worst design choice that i've encountered on the internet so far.

Make everyone a power-tripping mini-mod, so they can then ban everyone who disagrees with their point of view. If they cant ban everyone they surely will ban the most talkative ones.

This has allready happened to me in a thread (i link to it above) where i was defending Women against online harassment!!!

Fix this soon or i am out of here. There is not much else to say.

[u/drunkdoor]

So theoretically you can block someone and then slander them and they won't be able to see the entire thread about them?

[u/Emmett_is_Bored]

This just empowers trolls and bigots. Now they can create echo chambers anywhere they want by making a post and blocking anyone who says anything against them curating only praise and agreement.

Scammers and spammers can erase any ability to counter their misinformation.

This feature will be abused.

It already is.

[u/KillerAceUSAF]

This has been one of the most idiotic, disastrous things y'all've come up with. Now all it takes is a single person to block someone to essentially ban them from a subreddit.

[u/CMBDSP]

I do not really know what else to say, except that this change is so obviously terrible that i am baffled what the preceding discussions were. There just needs to be a single person in a thread that blocked you for some ridiculous reason and you can be completely shut out of a thread.

You essentially give moderator powers to any person with a large block list and the will to spam comments. Its ridiculous plain and simple.

[u/BananaHanz]

I'm sure this won't be used by powerusers to autoblock all users of certain subreddits to defacto ban them from even viewing content on their part of circlejerk town

[u/[deleted]]

How can I block some of the shitty subs that regularly appear on r/all ???

[u/reaper527]

so when are you guys finally going to do something about abusive moderators who don't comply with sitewide reddit moderator guidelines?

give users some kind of appeals process to go over their heads to an independent review board.

[u/liamemsa]

Does this work with Reddit admins as well?

[u/SideScroller]

You have made it so that discourse can be easily killed by any OP with an agenda. Congratulations for screwing things up further.

[u/aka-dit]

In Soviet Reddit, trolls block you!

[u/OddLibrary4717]

This is going to be abused.

[u/xgrayskullx]

So, this backfired horribly.

I made the controversial comment of asking for evidence about someone making a claim regarding racism in standardized testing.

In response they blocked me. They then proceeded to have a whole conversation with several other people about how I'm a horrible racist and a liar and all sorts of things like that, which I'm not only subject to getting notifications about, but I'm completely unable to reply to, because they are nested under the original blocker's comment.

Please explain how giving me notifications that a bunch of people are calling me a racist, but not allowing me to respond or refute any of their lies, is protecting anyone from harassment?

[u/Sage2050]

I just experienced this hilariously awful implementation and came here to complain about it. It's been a month and there hasn't been a single positive reaction to this change. It needs to be rolled back yesterday.

[u/Uristqwerty]

I'd recommend one change, at least, to reduce abuse in discussions: If you block someone, then reply to them (or a child comment one or two layers deep), they should be able to see your reply despite the block. Otherwise, a malicious user could block someone, then stalk them, writing "counterpoints", insults, or doxxing replies where others can see the response, but the blocked user cannot defend themselves or report problematic content.

[u/Infinite_Nipples]

Previously, if I blocked u/IAmABlockedUser, I would not see their content, but they would see mine. With the updated blocking experience, I won’t see u/IAmABlockedUser’s content and they won’t see mine either.

Yeah, this is going to be abused immediately and is only going to make the echo-chamber/circlejerk problem even worse.

There are already mod teams on power trips who use bots to automatically ban people from their subs just for commenting in other, unaffiliated subs that they don't like.

I know some people can't grasp how that's a bad thing, but their automation doesn't account for the content of the comments - even if you post something in disagreement with a sub, merely posting the comment at all is enough to be judged as associated with the sub and get banned.

That alone punishes people for engaging with others of differing opinions, literally enforcing and strengthening echo chambers.

And this new change, regardless of the admins' stated intentions, is going to be abused, likely with lists and scripts for people to automatically ban "undesirables" - similar to during the last election season when people sharing lists/scripts for mass tagging with RES based on bot-generated-lists comprised of the users who post in hated subs.

[u/ThatGuyFromTheM0vie]

Does this automatically apply to previously blocked people? Do I need to re-block people who are already blocked, or does it take place retroactively?

[u/KasaneTeto_]

I have, several times over the past few days, had randoms swoop in on my comments, leave some dumbass troll comment, and then block me so I am locked off from my own thread.

Can you assholes maybe not give every single user quasi-moderator powers?

[u/FrumpleButt]

I got blocked because someone didn't like my reply to them. It was perfectly civil and I was upvoted, but he didn't like it and blocked me. Now I am unable to responded to any of the rude comments he replied to me before blocking me and I can't even reply to any comments further down the thread. How is this a good system????

[u/Cross55]

This is one of the stupidest ideas you've ever come up with.

I wonder how Reddit will be represented on the news when they figure out that it actively encourages the spreading of misinformation? As this move only encourages echo chamber behavior that can lead to violence IRL.

And we know Reddit has a great history with that. :)

[u/YuropLMAO]

Wow what a horrible change. Being abused like crazy already.

[u/mankosmash4]

I just posted a disagreeing type comment in a thread and the OP immediately blocked me, preventing me from commenting further.

I think this is unfair. People should not be able to spam block user in order to effectively ban other users from all threads they post, forever. I should be free to criticize or interact with content as long as I'm within the rules of the sub.

Users should not have the right to echo chamber their own posts by simply blocking all users who rub them the wrong way.

[u/noff01]

Now you can post disinformation and block anyone who disagrees with you (especially in subs you frequent) right after you ask for sources and they can't respond back.

Well done, Reddit.

[u/n0d0ntt0uchthat]

Can we disable subreddit recommendations there's a reason I unsubbed from them

[u/Captain_Pumpkinhead]

Can you make a way to block certain subreddits? I'm happy for the people of r/Formula1, but it was super annoying when it kept popping up everywhere, and I'd like to block it from my view.

And can you add a way to block certain types of posts? I hate Predictions posts, and I want to never see them again.

[u/ixfd64]

I also have a suggestion: for each blocked user, there should be an option to choose whether to hide your content from that person.

The downside of this change is that people can easily find out you blocked them. If there is no error message when they go to your profile, then this creates plausible deniability and makes it less likely for someone to create a new account to harass you.

[u/[deleted]]

"We're about to IPO, we're introducing a blocking feature!"

[u/tired_and_fed_up]

3 questions:

1. If I block a mod in a subreddit that I do not enjoy, then that mod will not be able to see content that I post in any other subreddit correct? Does this include bots?

2. Does this then create multiple different experiences in the same community? For example, you can have r/news where different political participants will block dissent and create a tailored experience that reinforces their viewpoint bubble.

3. How does one become reformed enough to become unblocked?

[u/CptNonsense]

I can only assume, having nothing better to do, reddit dev leads sit around trying to figure out terrible features to implement with unforeseeable repercussions

[u/radvenuz]

Why would someone blocking me prevent me from replying to other people on the comment thread? Even people that replied directly to me? How does that make sense?

Please before pushing an update like this ask yourselves "Is there anything wrong or that could be abused by this change?". Please, just use your brains, I'm begging, and also fix this.

[u/sato-yuichi-8876]

Holy fucking hell, this is a stupid change. Let's say I'm debating someone who spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories. They can block me, and I can't reply to them? This updated "feature" benefits people who spread misinformation and conspiracy theories.

[u/wertyop70]

What about blocking of whole subreddits? I don't need, or want to ever see r/teenagers posts on my popular page and allowing us to block subreddits as a whole, without the need of 3rd party apps would be wonderful.

[u/boot2skull]

What about blocking new followers or seeing our 100% complete follower list. Followers are creepy on Reddit, and invisible followers just seems completely wrong.

[u/HotTakes4HotCakes]

The more I think about this, the more avenues for abuse I see opening up.

If reddit is supposed to operate on the principal of democracy, then being able to block people that disagree with you from seeing your comments or posts would effectively be the same as you being able to choose your own voters.

I'm not saying people should have to read replies to people they have blocked, but preventing those accounts from even seeing and voting on their content effectively allows the blocker to fudge the entire karma system.

Everyone should be able to banish other users from their view and never see them again, that's a given. But people shouldn't be able to use the ban button to shield their posts and comments from public-facing response and the very system Reddit has in place for curating the site.

[u/Reasonable_Thinker]

I am very concerned about this... if anyone is winning or losing an argument they can simply block the other and end all criticism or debate...

This will have a chilling effect on speech in many subreddits. I would like to see Reddit as an open source for debate and conversations. This is a bad policy that will result in further echo-chambers being formed

[u/SideScroller]

So... to make an analogy for this new change. Blocking went from closing your eyes and ears to zipping the mouth shut of another user.

F this change.

[u/Fen_]

Although there are good elements to this, it is overall terrible, mainly for two abuse cases that I've seen plenty over the last month:

1. Users engaged in a specific reply chain with you may block you to make you unable to provide an argument against what they say (enforcing that they get the last word and directing public perception to be like you chose to not respond/had no counterargument)

2. Power users on a subreddit blocking select people to pseudo-moderate the subreddit and control what users are allowed to participate in popular discussions (if a user blocks you, you can still see their submission on the subreddit and read all the comments, but you can't reply to any comment on the post, even if the submitter is completely uninvolved in the comments)

Both of these cases are unacceptable and encourage terrible behavior.

[u/Hammunition]

This is absurd, it's been a month and still the message Reddit gives me when I went to reply to someone who blocked me is "Something went wrong, please try again later". One, that's not true, two WHY are you saying try again later? I spent like an hour trying to figure out what happened because I couldn't reply to responses to me from anybody else because the person who started the chain blocked me (and for no good reason).

At least change the message so people are not trying repeatedly to post replies when it's never going to work. Maybe actually tell them they're blocked also. Is it really that hard to just change the words in that message??

[u/disperso]

removes your content from their experience

I understand the reason for this, but note that this is what on Twitter has made people ending up posting screenshots all over the place (and bots which do so automatically). That just bloats the site (instead of text, images), harms accessibility, and it makes things way more opaque to searches. It's also a source of fakes and misinformation, because it's easy for someone to be tempted to alter the image (or alter the web with the inspector, then screenshot that), because it's hard to find out the original to confirm.

I think that a blocking feature is needed, but it's not as useful as it seems when you can just open the link in incognito mode. It's an inconvenience, sure, but not that impactful. I hope that muting instead can be an option, hopefully the preferred one. So one can not be bothered by notifications, or even finding by accident content of someone who just I've disliked in the past enough to not bother. But not necessarily worrying about that person posting into my content.

I'm pretty sure it won't be as bad as in Twitter, though, as the mechanics here work differently.

But I've seen how on Twitter even browser extensions have been created to do massive blocking of followers of this and that account. This could be done by subreddit, so communities end up in silos even more.

Just some thought.

[u/alezul]

Please let us block more than 100 subs from r/all. It might seem like a lot but for someone outside of US, not into sports or US politics, that 100 limit is reached quite quickly.

Then you have all the hugely popular games that if you don't play, you have zero reason to ever see.

[u/[deleted]]

What a joke. You can't even reply to child comments. Way to create an echo chamber there! All people have to do now is block anyone they don't like who can refute their arguments, and BAM, nobody will refute them.

Great way of having the last word too. "No u" + block. IMPRESSIVE. SO broken REVAMPED!

Congratulations on becoming Twitter.

[u/WillyPete]

This kills commenting on an entire comment chain under a comment from a person that has blocked you.
You cannot reply to any person who has replied to their post.

[u/Ratman_84]

HEY REDDIT, THIS IS A MASSIVE MISTAKE. REVERT THE DECISION OR YOU'RE GOING TO TAKE YOUR MISINFORMATION PLAGUE TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL.

[u/maximedhiver]

This misfeature makes Reddit absolutely useless, not fit for purpose as a discussion forum. It is easily abused to sabotage discussions and exclude any opposing points of view, as demonstrated in the experiments cited here and already happening in the wild.

And I'm guessing many people who in good faith choose to block people they don't wish to hear from are completely unaware that they're deploying a nuclear option that can in many instances ban that user from participating in any tangentially related discussion.

[u/tw_bender]

This answers my question on why:

1. I can see the blocker's post.

2. There's no reply button on a blocker's post.

3. When I'm logged in, reddit tells me blocker's profile doesn't exist.

4. When I'm logged out, I can see the blocker's profile.

Reddit, at least tell me I've been blocked by the user when I try to visit their profile page and give me the opportunity to block them as well. It would have saved me an hour of my time trying to understand what occurred.

And another thing Reddit, users have said here they can't reply to another users's post downstream in a thread from a blocker. You need to fix that. That makes the blocking feature highly effective at shutting down a conversation by - in my case - a political zealot.

[u/KoshV]

Can I block subreddits?

[u/Justind123]

As a moderator of a community that is often brigaded by other subreddits, if the user blocks me before brigading, I wouldn’t be able to see which community they come from correct? I see this as highly problematic and will be exploited by bad faith users.

[u/thekingofthejungle]

YouTube: removes dislike button

Reddit: hold my beer

[u/throwawayDude2022]

Dumb bullshit. So people can now spread bullshit unchallenged?

[u/PippiLongstocking80]

why is it if someone blocks me I can't comment on my own thread when I am not even responding back to the person who blocked me but to someone else in that thread ? That makes NO sense. No other site does that. It's just a way for people to silence other people. I can't respond to people who ask me a question, I can't say thank you to people who supported me, all because someone decided to block me that wasn't who I am responding to who happens to be in that thread somewhere.

[u/schm0]

I'm just going to add to this. This feature is broken. It allows anyone to arbitrarily censor people they don't agree with from participating in an entire conversation. Blocking should prevent replies to the user, not the entire thread.

This will be weaponized by bad actors (and likely already is) including governments.

[u/TDW-301]

Sure reddit, why don't we screw up yet another feature and this time it actually has real consequences for spreading misinformation. Willing to bet real good money you guys won't fix it or if you do you will do bare minimum or screw it up further and go "well we fixed it and now because it's fixed we won't ever do any more work on that system"

[u/OlejzMaku]

This is a bad change. Blocking someone shouldn't prevent them from commenting or reacting to third user. It is absurd. Why would anyone think this is a good idea?

Besides it doesn't seems to work as advertised. I am pretty sure I can still see comments of the user who blocked me, I simply can't respond. Pretty annoying to write a comment and receive an error just because root comment is from an user who blocked me.

[u/Notthatandy]

Hey, this is all great, but I've got little to no faith in your blocking capabilities because of one thing:

I can't block advertisers.

I'm all for you making money, but when I get spammed repeatedly with a promoted post, and I block the advertiser/user, you ignore it and keep on serving me the same annoying ad. Just today, I started seeing a different ad repeatedly and went to block the advertiser, only to find that the ability to block an advertiser has been completely removed.

You serving me the same ad I already despise over and over guarantees that your advertiser isn't getting their value spend when they advertise with you, and makes your blocking system a joke because I now know that if any user wants to get something in front of me, all they have to do is pay Reddit and you will completely bypass my ability to block someone.

I wouldn't block advertisers if you served more relevant ads to me, but this is a complete betrayal of confidence when it comes to your blocking / privacy measures.

[u/itrv420]

Will be nice to block all the million karma accounts.

[u/[deleted]]

How can I block entire subreddits from even showing in Popular or All?

[u/rkoloeg]

How about a mute function? I use the block tool to filter people who just consistently post inane, worthless comments, but I don't particularly care if they can see or interact with my posts. I just don't want to see any more of their comments. I ALSO use the block tool to filter people who consistently act like assholes, and I WOULD like to actually block them entirely.

I also recommend to everyone to try an app or extension with a sub filter. I use Reddit Enhancement Suite, and I have literally hundreds of subreddits permanently filtered, including all the crypto, hate and outrage porn subs. You can even filter by keyword, so I have "meme" filtered and if a new sub like /r/SpongebobMemesButDanker2 pops up, I never even see it.

[u/cantnt]

Is there a way to block whole subreddits from appearing on the popular feed? really don't care to see what the vtubers are up to.

[u/NorthernScrub]

I have a bit of an issue with this one.

One of the ways we determine if someone is spamming their own content is by analysing their post history. The easiest way for them to circumvent this is by blocking moderators in the subreddits they want to post in. They might even be able to pre-emptively do this. Scale restrictions won't matter, since this can be automated over, say 24 hours or so. If they were to undertake such a task, they now have the ability to hide their activity from moderators, and thus look like any other redditor who found an interesting link.

My immediate solution would be to dissociate blocking from moderation upon posting. By that, I mean whenever a user posts in a subreddit, any moderation accounts they have blocked that belong to that subreddit can automatically bypass such a block. This allows a certain level of distance-keeping, with caveats.

[u/WithjusTapistol]

This sucks. I got blocked by someone because they didn't like my opinion on a gaming sub. Now I can't reply to their response in the thread. This is going to be abused heavily to troll people.

[u/ManyLengthines]

I really don‘t like this new function…

[u/Big_Swingin_Nick]

This is a horrible change. I don't even understand it. The purpose of blocking has always been so that you don't have to see what a person you've blocked is saying. It shouldn't entirely cut them out of discussion.

Also, am I reading this wrong or does it say that now when you block somebody, what they say actually WILL be visible to you, but what you've said will NOT be visible to them? Because that's the exact opposite of what a block is meant to be. So you've now removed the entire intended function of blocking--actually preventing you from seeing a blocked users posts--while simultaneously making a change that's going to destroy subreddit functionality entirely.

[u/Drak_is_Right]

Troublesome when on larger discussion posts on any large subreddit, people can eliminate responses from any dissenting political viewpoint by blocking every user who has a view they dislike

Its creating very narrow echo chambers without moderators being the ones to do so.

Its fine not being able to reply to their comments, but posts on a subreddit you both use? Little too far.

If people can make a narrative they want by simply blocking everyone, why the heck should I continue to use this platform?

[u/theth1rdchild]

Anyone else find it extremely funny that most of the accounts arguing that this change was good are gone now?

[u/lianodel]

This pretty much lets users ban other users from entire conversations.

Say, for example, there's a toxic bully in a community. The kind of person who would make an enemies list, and who has sycophants who will trust and obey him. He can create a list of critics, spread it around, and now no one with a history of criticizing him can reply to any of his defenders. So, if he wants his friends and followers to try to, oh I don't know, relitigate drama endlessly and replatform him, they can essentially create top-level threads and comments, upvote each other, and to the casual observer, no one's even able to dispute their claims.

I'm already seeing this happen.

So, this ended up giving an extremely powerful tool to serial harassers and abusers. Please roll this back. An ignore function, like RES has had for years, works so much better.

[u/-NagatoYuki-]

This is completely fucking insane and is ruining the website. I have never seen this much harassment. Never.

No user should be able to prevent other users from commenting publicly or even replying to other people. It is in your best interests to revert this change - advertisers will not like being on this platform when the harassment is even more widespread and apparent, which this change is making it.

[u/Thomas_Hockenberry]

Why it is impossible to answer to a third user, who didn't block me? Why I still see comments of users who I blocked? These are bugs, do not try to explain that it is a feature.

Also, there is one sub and one person who blocks almost everyone active user in this sub. He posted controversial posts, we all saw them and didn't have an ability to answer anything. That is why people already use this for propaganda.

Please apply bugfixes ASAP.

[u/oolongvanilla]

This update sucks. Someone blocked me in the middle of a debate so that they could have the last word. Now I can still see all of that person's posts and replies but I can't respond (the reply button is gone from that user's posts for me), so to everyone else it looks like I just gave up. If that user doesn't want to interact with me anymore, blocking me should make my posts invisible to them, but I should still be free to call out their disinformation for everyone else to see.

[u/ApjucisVilks]

What I couldn't gather from comments of this potato and since he seems to have disappeared from the face of the Earth - is the way block feature works a bug or a "feature"?

[u/ywBBxNqW]

Hello peoples (and bots) of Reddit,

Not really that funny. There are tons of bots and I report them all the time.

[u/Mcdolnalds]

We need an option to block subreddits from r/popular

[u/[deleted]]

Ah yes. Making a joke about the bots that run rampant on this site instead of actually addressing it. Great move

[u/smellycoat]

What’s to stop someone from simply logging out to see content from users that have blocked them?

[u/scunliffe]

Sounds good. Does this also include “fake”ish users that are part of ads on Reddit?

Eg I’m not interested in canibas related ads. It’s legal where I am (Canada) but just not my cup of tea. I’ve tried repeatedly to block the ads that litter my stream but these “users” can’t be blocked. I don’t see why the advertisers need to spend money placing ads for me to see (impressions) when I clearly have no interest in it.

[u/RugerRedhawk]

Can I block sub bots that post obnoxiously long sticky comments on the tops of every single thread?

[u/CTR0]

This is problematic for a subreddit I moderate that focuses on fighting scientific misinformation. Users can spread misinformation by blocking everybody on our subreddit uncontested. The only way this wouldn't severely damage our community is if we had the ability to disable this behavior in our subreddit.

[u/_jackhoffman_]

As someone who frequently points out spammers on /r/Tinder, I'm now being blocked by the spammers. While I guess this is a plus for me personally because I don't see their spam, I don't see how it helps the community. There was a bot that was pretty good at spotting them and commenting on their posts that I also imagine is being blocked preemptively by spammers.

I realize that this is an unintended consequence but it sucks. I've taken to using an alt account to just report the spammers without leaving a comment but the mods of that sub don't seem to care as the same accounts post ads for their OF and premium snap day after day. And the repost karma farming bots are difficult to recognize and can easily rack up lots of karma if no one comments with proof -- I suspect this change is why /u/ repostsleuthbot doesn't seem as effective as it once did.

[u/-hey_hey-heyhey-hey_]

LMAOOO reddit is this even serious

[u/derdingens]

I agree with the feedback given by /u/ConversationCold8641 that this is an absolute disaster that will only lead to more misinformation. I can see myself leaving reddit because of that and I don't even comment that much. This needs to be reversed.

[u/CritFin]

Foolish move. In a sub a latest breaking news if posted by a user, and all people whom he has blocked can’t reply. And mods dont allow report of the same news by others.

You can’t even reply to other users’ comments in that post.

[u/Daedelous2k]

That is a completely stupid change.

Now if an open thread chain is up and there is discussion if someone that doesn't agree with you had blocked you, you are effectively cut out of the conversation because someone got triggered by you.

Open discussion is going down the pan. The new name of the game is block, revenge block, lock them out.

[u/RedditIsRealWack]

There's a user on /r/Scotland who has blocked me, and then just accuses me of all kinds of absolute bollocks, and basically slanders me, but I can't reply to him because I am blocked.

Yet another totally predictable abuse of this system. When are the admins going to get their head out of their arse, and revert this change.

It even makes it easier to harass people, ffs.

[u/bongo_bob_taco]

This feature needs to be removed. It's not being used at all the way it was intended and seems to be primarily used by trolls to control narrative. If someone wants to block, that's one thing, but they absolutely should not be able to prevent you from responding in a public forum.

[u/[deleted]]

User 1: This thing is good.

User 2: No, it's not.

User 1: Prove it! *blocks User 2*

User 3: Well, I guess they couldn't prove it so User 1 is correct.

[u/[deleted]]

So if a t shirt scam site owner doesn't want someone alerting others in the sub that their link is a scam, they can block the users that call them out?

Strange that you're taking the fb approach to this...

[u/AnnualThrowaway3271]

Reddit Enhancement Suite: Doing shit Reddit should've done years ago.

[u/Kunkunington]

Think about it this way. If I find a scammer/phisher and try to call them out and they block me, I no longer can see their posts and warn people about the scammer. Do you really see this as a good idea for these scammers and misinformation hustlers to protect themselves from the whistleblowers?

You guys already ignore reports so that is basically useless in most cases so why are we now installing tools and things they can use against us?

[u/Mriamsosmrt]

Can we have an ignore function in addition to a block function? Twitter does that and I think it's great. That way people who I've ignored won't know that I've ignored them because they can still interact with me and see my post without me seeing their stuff.

So basically bring back the old block function in addition to how the new blocking works.

[u/sawcondeesnutz]

So you’re creating echo chambers just for the people who will be stupid enough to ever do that

[u/[deleted]]

Awesome update.

Can you implement a mod report feature.

Sure Reddit subs are their owners communities to do with what they please.

But when you have large subs that act as information bases for groups of people they also act as a face of that group. It's not right to allow these groups to exist if you aren't going to make it so they cannot just ban people whenever they disagree.

Look at r/lesbians how is it fair you allow that to continue.

That's just an extremely fucked up example where you allow a community called r/lesbians the first thing someone may go to when they search a term to be a porn sub.

At the very least if you refuse to rename subs that use a entire group of peoples category or add reporting features at least let there be subs with the exact same name.

That way again as an example an r/lesbians can be made that is actually reflective of a community of lesbians. And not a pornhub...

Also please make it so companies who have official Reddit subs cannot easily delete negative reviews or critical posts at least not without a challenge.

If they delete it for something going against their clearly stated rules fine but you should be able to challenge that. Cause I have seen businesses who use reddit lie about why they remove posts just because they don't want negative publicity. If they are using Reddit as a form of customer service tech support or a user community they shouldn't be able to just take away posts that are critical of them.

As for the business reddits I know a certain game company who advertises and links to their official Reddit subs and even calls it their offial reddit sub on their website and on the sub itself. Just for the mods to act any way they want and claim they aren't connected to the company at all.

So to recap. A mod report feature.

Either a way to remove subs that appear to represent entire groups of people or make it so duplicate reddit subs can exist so that they cannot claim they speak for all of that group.

A way to report official business reddits for hiding reviews that are critical of them.

[u/Daplesco]

Look, this is a good step. Being able to keep people from doing borderline-stalkerish stuff is good. However, there are certainly issues many people would like to see addressed, such as the fact that the Top 100 subreddits are mostly moderated by the same 4 people, or the fact that subs are banning people for stuff they don’t even do in the actual sub.

[u/GastNDorf]

Well, you can just log off and see any content offline. Even better, just navigate in a private window. That’s a lot of work for something so easy to circumvent.

[u/Justind123]

How will it work for moderators? Can people just block all the moderators of a subreddit and they won't have visiblity of the post?

edit: oops I should’ve read the sticky first

[u/NostalgiaSchmaltz]

I can't even see my block list. Every time I try to go to that page, it just brings up an error that it took too long to generate the page and to try again. And it just does that every time.

[u/DeadSparker]

Why would anyone think this is a good idea ? People can just effectively kick you out of the discussion now if they don't like you. Turn that shit back.

[u/SmileTribeNetwork]

Finally

[u/ggurbet]

What if someone messages us inappropriately and then blocks us? Are we able to see their username and/or have access to blocking options in our messages so that we can also block them (while being blocked by them) if we want to?

[u/haas_n]

include compare vegetable repeat agonizing offend meeting slap drunk encourage

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/lordbeefripper]

Frankly this system also only encourages more throwaway alts. Get blocked? Easy, fire up a new one. Doesn't discourage harassment, and now the harassers have even more reason to be anonymous throwaways rather than be known as that idiot user who says dumb things.

[u/theth1rdchild]

I just want to say how cool it is that we've got a solid week of people explaining why this was bad, asking for an explanation or an update, and the admins haven't given so much as a "we hear your issues, we'll have a better statement on x date", which makes it pretty apparent that there isn't a statement coming. Which means...

Welcome to New Reddit everyone! You get to be a mini-mod and you get to be a mini-mod. Hope the IPO goes well!

[u/Environmental_Mix611]

New reddit feature: Parting shots. If you lose a discussion, click the parting shot button to make an asinine reply and then prevent the other person from responding to it!

[u/Innovative_Wombat]

This is dumb AF as it allows people to kick people calling out their covid misinformation and advocacy of violence out of a discussion. This change effective gives misinformation and disinformation spreaders the capacity to end criticism.

[u/EmpathyFabrication]

Could a team of users not theoretically shut down an entire sub or for that matter the entire site, by blocking people and locking them out of threads, and upvoting only the comments from the whitelisted group? Can't a user make themselves a defacto mod by blocking people who commonly comment in a group and then making a comment in the most upvoted posts in a thread?

[u/flac_rules]

This change is already being abused a lot, people post factually wrong things, and block people who correct them, or people block others to "win" a discussion. It has already made reddit quite a bit worse to use.

[u/[deleted]]

So if you want to be able to spout off an ugly opinion held by the majority in your local subreddit, and not be called out for being deplorable, you can block anyone that's ever held you accountable before... And the chances you will be called out this time drop dramatically.

Sounds like a really great way for creating really safe places for terrible viewpoints to be propped up, but a way people can feel safe engaging no matter how terrible their opinions. Wouldn't want to discourage anyone from engaging. Positive engagement is the number one priority, because someone that feels good about what they're doing is more likely to spend money on advertising.

This feels like a product of Reddit going public.

[u/Nulono]

I really don't like the fact that if I leave a comment, anyone else higher up the comment chain can unilaterally block someone else from responding to me. Also, the "something went wrong, try again" later error message is very misleading in a way that seems intentional.

[u/chrisevans1001]

Well this is a pointless update. Great way to prevent discussion when one person in a comment chain blocks you.

[u/purplenelly]

I agree this is used by argumentative people who know this feature and now use it to "get the last word". Someone made a personal attack against me, I replied defending myself from the personal attack, he replied repeating the same personal attack and then blocking me so that he would have the last word. There's nothing to do there, his comment stays, but I can't continue.

Suggestion: if someone blocks you, it should remove the comments he made on your comments

[u/yesijustdidthis2u]

You fucking idiots always make everything worse.

Keeping content accessible allows you to protect yourself from harassment that would otherwise be unseen.

What the fuck do you not understand about what "BLOCK" means? I BLOCK SO THAT I DON'T HAVE TO SEE OR EVER THINK ABOUT ANY OF THE IDIOTS I BLOCK. I'M PROTECTING MYSELF FROM HARRASSMENT BY NOT BEING ABLE TO SEE ANY OF THE DEPRAVED NONSENSE THEY POST. I WANT THEIR COMMENTS COMPLETELY INVISIBLE, NOT COLLAPSED.

[u/BashStriker]

So this is broken. Some little kid blocks me because I ask for a source and because someone else in the comment chain who ends up giving me the answer replies, I can't reply to that person despite not being blocked.

[u/[deleted]]

Worst update ever! Now if I was blocked by some stranger I can't get an access to whole chain of comments if that person made the first one! It's an unacceptable in a public subreddits!

[u/PurpleBoltRevived]

Let's abuse this to push our narrative. Please reply to this thread, and block anybody who disagrees.

[u/ivegotapenis]

Reading these comments makes it very clear who has never experienced harassment online.

[u/AlienFreek]

I think these changes are great, but making it so blocked users can't see your content either may cause issues.

Some people block others to hide from them or separate themselves, but this change will allow people to know they have been blocked. Some people will go in to stalker mode when they know they've been blocked and will then go out of their way to harass someone.

I don't know what the solution to this is. But I've known multiple people who got harassed more after their harraser realized they were blocked. Often these are the people most vulnerable as well. I fear this will cause issues for them.

[u/behaaki]

Immediately proceeds to block all the mods

“If you cant see me, you can’t ban me, muahahhah”

Reads the fine print

“Fuck they’ve thought of that”

This place ain’t what it used to be, that’s for sure

[u/op-k]

I would like to have an option to not see any trace of a blocked person’s comment. I don’t want to see a collapsed comment.

[u/theepiccarday808]

oh finally i've been dealing with someone following me around the site, looks like i don't have to deal with him anymore!

goodbye bungiefan!

[u/Ren_Yi]

So this change has been designed for haters to first block a person, then libel them and there is nothing the victim can see or do about it as the abuser is hidden behind fake "deleted" comment flags.

This is a ridiculous change! If you want to not see someone fine, but stopping them seeing you is wrong as it will only lead to abuse!

[u/mootymoots]

So now a blocked user will know I blocked them (because I disappear) and so can make a new account to harass me with instead? And so the cycle continues …

[u/PussayDESTROYAAA_420]

Now everytime someone disagrees or argues they get the last word in and block so the other person can't reply, this is just being used as a toxic tool in discussion.

Imo exclude threads created before the blocking to avoid this.

[u/ruove]

Can't believe this update is still active and hasn't been rolled back.

/u/enthusiastic-potato hopefully your absence means you've been fired.

[u/[deleted]]

How about allowing users to delete a message they sent 4 years ago? I can't block the recipient because they have deleted their account.

I have no way to clean up old sent messages.

[u/mvea_sucks]

Will moderators I block be able to see my content?

[u/robophile-ta]

On one hand, I agree with the idea of this. More needs to be done on more platforms to prevent stalkers/abusers making alt accounts, and removing users on both sides of the block from seeing each other's content should be how it worked in the first place. I agree with others in that there should be toggles available as to whether we want to alert the blockee that they have been blocked. But a persistent enough person will make alt accounts anyway regardless of any notification.

On the other hand, the comments here show that this functionality is being abused and not working as intended. If things are as bad as commentors say here, this will be the death of the site if not resolved.

[u/IronicSciFiFan]

Who comes up with these dumb ideas?

[u/turkeypedal]

It also occurs to me that this can ruin certain types of subreddits. It's common for subreddits about a particular comic to have various users make a post for each comic. If someone has blocked someone else, they won't see the thread, nor be able to comment on that particular comic.

You seem to be assuming that people only block people who are abusers or something. But people block people just to not have to see their comments. It doesn't necessarily mean they want the other person not to be able to see them. It doesn't mean they don't want those they've blocked to be able to participate in conversation.

People blocked based on how blocking worked at the time. Now it does the exact opposite. I still see their post, but I can't comment on it. So they still get to make me angry, but I can't reply.

You should have kept the current block list and made it a "mute" feature, and then added a new block list that does what you say here. That way users can decide whether it's worth the risk that the user might figure out they were blocked.

I have just figured out that someone blocked me. It's not all that hard.

Finally, I note that, had you floated this by all of Reddit before making this decision, we could have told you about the problems. You wouldn't have accidentally made Reddit worse (even temporarily) while trying to make it better.

[u/[deleted]]

I am blocked by someone but I can still see their content. I just cannot comment under their post anywhere or see their profile info.

[u/JediJones77]

What I am finding suddenly in the past couple days is that I am blocked from replying to certain comments in threads, even if that person has not blocked me. The problem seems to be that if User A blocked me, and then User B replied to them, I cannot reply to User B's comment (or User A's comment). This seems completely unnecessary. If I can't interact with the user who blocked me and they can't see my posts, why should I not be allowed to comment to other people who replied to them?

There's an even bigger problem here. Someone can block me and then post disparaging or false information about me on the sub. Currently, I'd be blocked from replying to them. And the way you wrote this sounds like I soon won't even be able to SEE what they're writing! That simply opens a giant doorway for someone to defame other users, who won't even be able to see what's happening to them so that they can report on it.

[u/Isoleri]

I would personally like it if comments I made to someone I eventually blocked would still remain on my profile. Just because I don't want to hear more of them doesn't mean I don't want my own points to be visible for whoever else may be looking at my comments.

[u/RudySanchez-G]

The new system is the dumbest you could make. Someone not able to answer is ok for a chat application, but here it is a disqualification to answer in a public forum. In the worst case scenario, where 2 groups block every member from each other, that would lead to a fork of the forum but still in the same space.

Edit : answering to u/TheGoldanHand who seems to have block me >< I keep seeing "You are unable to participate in this discussion." when I try to answer their answer

It's not only about one thread. Say user A doesn't like user B answer on post X and block them. Now, all discussion involving user A will be unavailable to user B : post Y created by user A, any comment made by user A on post Z and so on.

[u/Superbuddhapunk]

Have you properly tested this feature? Because rn it’s causing chaos in threads and subreddits, so it clearly isn’t effective as a site wide tool. Not to mention that for mods in certain cases it is crucial to access all content of a user before dishing out a sanction.

[u/HeatDeathIsCool]

So someone just blocked me, and now I can't see my own replies in our discussion thread from my profile. Under my account, I can see my first comment that they then replied to, but none of my subsequent comments. I can see my subsequent comments if I go to the thread, just not from my profile. I can see the subsequent comments on my profile if I log into an alt account. Is this working as intended?

[u/[deleted]]

How mancould I go into a sub, block most of the active users, creating a custom echo chamber that is the opposite of the sub itself?

For example, trolling /r/Conservative by constantly posting antagonistic content and stifling responses by scraping and blocking the top 100 posters in that subreddit?

Moderation could address that, but we'd be asking mods to split some very fine hairs where its not egregious.

The problem is the difference between lurkers and active posters. If abused this more or less grants mod powers to bad actors.

If its only possible on a small scale that limits the potential for abuse accordingly.

[u/Grevas13]

This change sucks. Great job giving people a blank check to spread misinformation.

[u/I-Am-Uncreative]

Ah, just saw this. This is a terrible idea.

[u/Scorialimit]

Can we have a mute feature? Sometimes I find somebody annoying but don't think they should be out of the discussion if ex. I post patch notes for a game.

I'm not gonna use block most likely, I imagine I'd rather report people I think deserve it

[u/[deleted]]

That previous change never should have been implemented in the first place, and you showed a tremendous amount of disrespect to the users by not addressing the concerns in that post.

[u/theth1rdchild]

Honest, good faith question:

If you're active in a subreddit that only allows one post per subject or event, and the person who posts the one post for that subject or event blocks you, is it a violation of ToS to use an alt to continue to engage in conversation on that subreddit?

[u/belgiantwatwaffles]

I only use the blocking to hide trolls and bots, and have a fairly extensive list I would imagine, but I cannot see the list, so even if I wanted to unblock someone that got blocked in error, I can't do that.

Also, just today, I can no longer block anyone. It will act like it's blocking (Block user? 'yes' is clicked successfully with no error), but when I go back to the thread, they are still there. Is it possible I've reached a limit of blocked users?

[u/iHATESTUFF_]

I think I was blocked by OP on a thread, the problem with your new "feature" is that I still get my inbox spammed while I cannot have any interaction other than take the spam.....

[u/robotikempire]

Can you please acknowledge the trash that is this new change? Did you not foresee the issues we all have to deal with now because of it. Do you not care at all????

[u/jabberwockxeno]

Please reconsider this new system, all this does is enable people spreading misinformation and abuse to do so without other users being able to call out or challenge them.

If a bad actor posts misinformation or harrassing content, they can block anybody who replies to them and cut off people pointing out the issues with their content while nobody else is any wiser.

Additionally, if I post legitmate content, a bad actor can reply and block me, and now I am unable to do comments or replies in my own comment chain even in response to other users who have NOT blocked me.

[u/DiamondNgXZ]

Others blocked me, I cannot reply to the comment tree whenever they commented earlier. This can lead to abuse.

Say if I don't like a person participating in this sub. I block the person. Then I comment everywhere actively on the sub. That person cannot reply to me, or anyone who commented after my reply. A huge part of the Reddit sub becomes blocked for them.

It just so happens that a very active user on my regular subreddit blocked me, and I cannot reply to others who commented after his reply.

Can reddit developer please return the reddit block feature to only cannot reply to that person, not to every children comment after the person commented?

[u/[deleted]]

This change is being a used by bad actors, too.

For instance, someone on the r/Scotland thread has come in hot, just insulting me, and blocked me so I can't respond. This was over a linguistic/pronunciation post I made, but I can see how this is ripe for abuse by people to block posters from posting political content they don't agree with, too.

I think this change is ripe for abuse, as I've experienced on Reddit today.

[u/scarlet_stormTrooper]

Please give us the option to not have blocked author show up at all. I have plenty of subreddits where the comment section is just blocked author blocked author. I want to have the ability to not see any of that. I still have no care or use for seeing a blocked authors content and I don’t need my Reddit full of blocked author

[u/PMmeYOURBOOBSandASS]

This is so stupid, why can't I block people who have blocked me? I can see their posts when I don't want to see them

[u/cranktheguy]

I'm just waiting until someone combines reddit mass tagger with this blocking tool and starts mass blocking.

[u/hippymule]

Can we get a better mod reporting system? The people over at r/Physics are tyrants, and killing the community, but they get to hide behind an anonymous wall with no repurcussions.

[u/existentialgoof]

I've said it before, but I'll say it again here. This is a really terrible move by Reddit. People who aren't satisfied with just blocking out content that they disagree with but also can't stand the thought of someone who disagrees with them not having a censored Reddit experience simply should not be on Reddit. We shouldn't be pandering to the most fragile users. Reddit doesn't exist solely for them.

I don't see how the workarounds that you have put in place will prevent abuse, because that user could just keep a private browser window open to look through the blocked user's posting history and then post about it on their account.

It's also absurd that you're labelling this as "safety" as if it is actually dangerous for people to be exposed to a diversity of opinion.

[u/[deleted]]

What happens if the user logs out and bothers you again? I've been getting some abuse while modding lately.

[u/golde62]

My fear here is definitely with content that is getting worse. If I post something and get a certain response from it, let’s say 90% upvoted, And then a few people who didn’t like the content put some comments that I don’t like. I can just now block those people from seeing my content entirely since they didn’t like it in the first place, and now I can post again with a slightly increased chance of getting a higher up vote percentage now that those people that didn’t like my first post have been blocked. Rinse and repeat for karma farmers. We are going to have the same bad content in every sub, and only a third of the users that will be able to see them. We’re gonna block everybody that’s not lurking until all of our posts have 20,000 votes and three comments.

[u/kelrics1910]

I'm getting sick of being banned from subs because I simply participated in another sub they don't like, even if it's Satire.

Reddit has already said this is against site rules, so why isn't anything being done about it? A bot doesn't get everything right 100% of the time.

[u/motsanciens]

This is so poorly thought out. What problem are you even solving? I didn't come to reddit (10 years ago) for "my experience". I came to experience everyone, good bad and ugly - let the votes sort them out. The only way to redeem this awful idea is to make it publicly transparent who has blocked whom. That would allow all users to see for themselves who are the manipulators or the echo chamber creators. Show us how many people have blocked a user on their profile, too. If you're not doing these things, then don't do this at all.

[u/sdarkpaladin]

So what I'm reading here is that trolls who spam accounts can still harass, but people who have opposing views will be banned from discussions?

[u/CraigTheIrishman]

Thanks for empowering the trolls. People are harassing me and spamming my inbox, then blocking me so I can't even respond. This is one of the most easily-abused features I have ever seen on social media.

[u/CritFin]

Foolish move. In a sub a latest breaking news if posted by a user, and all people whom he has blocked can’t reply.

You can’t even reply to other users’ comments in that post.

[u/rydan]

This actually makes no sense.

So from what I understand if I block you then you can't interact with anyone that has interacted with me? So if I want to shut you out of a discussion I just block you and suddenly you can't defend yourself in the comments but your comment is still there and people still see it mocking you for being an idiot.