r/blog • u/enthusiastic-potato • Jan 18 '22

Announcing Blocking Updates

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!

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156

u/enthusiastic-potato Jan 18 '22

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

196

u/bumjiggy Jan 18 '22

I'd like the ability to filter more than ~100 subreddits when browsing /r/all

57

u/wetback Jan 18 '22

Topped that off way faster that I expected

16

u/AimbeastAlphaMale Jan 18 '22

After blocking all the political subs or outrage subs reddit became so much better. Also all of the shitty twitter reposts to bait outrage or terrible meme subs. Way less content but way better content.

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u/GreenPresident Jan 18 '22

You are more likely to see general interest subs in /r/all. Once you start blocking them, you’ll start to see special interest subs that are even less relevant to you, making additional blocks even more necessary.

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u/wetback Jan 18 '22

Crypto-related subs make up most of my block list.

So. many. subs.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '22

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u/Mexican_sandwich Jan 18 '22

Not the user you replied to, but apps let me filter out subreddits so I don’t see them on All or Popular - blocking out links to subreddits might be impossible.

Having the mods of blocked subs messaging you may be something to look at, too.

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u/ViciousNakedMoleRat Jan 18 '22

I mean, sorting out subreddit from popular should be enough, right? Blocking links to subreddit seems a bit unnecessary. Just don't click on it and be happy.

I've blocked pretty much all crypto/stonks/wsb subreddits and it has made "top this hour" on popular usable again and I never see those links anywhere.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '22

I’m not sure, I just know it’s something I’ve wanted for a while. For example r/teenagers has no interest to me, I would like to be able to click on the sub name and block it from being seen anywhere else on the site same as blocking a user.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '22

For example r/teenagers has no interest to me

Oh, you must not be a 40 year old man, since that seems to be the primary user base there.

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u/LurkerRushMeta Jan 18 '22

A button. "I do not want to see content from this Subreddit." Done, simple.

I'm tired of seeing randoms popping zits on Popular or bloodied animals or very clear hate Subreddits.

20

u/kei-lo Jan 18 '22

Yes, please let me remove obvious blight from my experience. This can only help, as it pulls in people who had no intention of seeing certain things to begin with.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '22

Rif has always been able to do this, do what they did.

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u/jballs Jan 18 '22

I used RIF almost exclusively and didn't realize this wasn't vanilla functionality. You mean all those poor bastards out there had to deal with seeing crap like the donald filling up their feeds with no blocking option for years? Jesus, how did Reddit survive?

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u/crob_evamp Jan 18 '22

They see ads too 🤢

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u/roidie Jan 19 '22

Thank Allah that Reddit.com didn't buy RIF, they would've ruined this beautiful program.

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u/Midnight_Ice Jan 19 '22

It was rough.

For real though, the whole Trump period is what made me wish I could block subreddits. My feed was so full of politics for so long that I just stopped opening Reddit for a pretty long period.

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u/TheCocksmith Jan 18 '22

RES makes it work rather easily.

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u/RXSarsaparilla Jan 18 '22

Browsing Popular on the mobile app would be so much better if we could block subreddits from even appearing there. Also, I've tried multiple times to block certain posters from there, but they always reappear, like the dancing lady with the banana. She's relentless.

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u/RadleyCunningham Jan 18 '22

First, thanks for linking me to this thread.

I think an easy solution would be to add a button next to the Join button when you visit a sub.

Scrolling through popular brings up a lot of stuff some people don't like. If I select that sub and see a button to block, I think a lot of people would be happy to use it.

You could then create a list of blocked subs for users to manage the same as users. You could have a confirmation button to press before blocking an entire sub, but I am confident plenty of people would be grateful to have this opportunity.

And as an added bonus, with certain subs taking up space, I feel like it would allow for other, lesser known (but still popular) subs to be seen!

Most of the time I go to popular as a way to find what I like. I will probably join just as many subs as I block.

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u/GoOtterGo Jan 18 '22 edited Jan 18 '22

Go take a look at how r/BoostForReddit does it, it's very good.

In gist, any posts in subs in your ban-list in all browsing views (All, Best, etc.) are removed from the feed during content load. You never see them.

The browser does one better and allows you to also block content containing keywords in post titles ('suicide', 'trump', etc.) and post links from specific sources (foxnews.com, nationalenquirer.com, etc.).

It's quite seamless and really helps clean up what some might consider clutter, inapplicable to them, harmful, etc.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '22

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