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@tillshadeisgone @CaribenxMarciaX i think... there's somethign missing to this conversation.

I can't speek for others on other platforms, but... a lot of the FediBlock reminds me of lgbt discourse on Tumblr from back in the day.

Let me tell you, the results from that are ugly. Very Ugly.

It tore communities apart - especially the ones with well meaning users. Important topics would become taboo because no one could be sure if their perspective was "pure" enough. People would dogpile users, and the evidence of what actually started the attacks would simply vanish, either because OP deleted it, or because there were just... so many angry comments. Instigators would make accounts and make bad faith arguments, which caused a lot of confusion.

When I say it was ugly, I mean it was ugly.

Communities did not survive.Good friends stopped talking to each other, even when they weren't on different sides.

Hell, people would wind up on the wrong side of arguments because the conversation would have twisted so much!

These were people who didn't have a great foundation to begin with - people who still needed to learn the basics of this conversation. Of course they'd be easy to lead astray. To manipulate.

And then there were the blocklists.

Unvetted. From strangers on the internet. No evidence needed.

Of course they were abused.

but crucially

No one was protected by this. No one was helped. There weren't deeper understandings fostered, and like hell did anyone have the ability to actually protect anyone else! What benefit even was there to all that ugglyness? I can't think of any.

The only way out of that constant uglyness is to disengage from it. So that's what a lot of people did - to varying degrees.

Many left Tumblr all together. Others stayed, but largely fell silent.

As you can imagine, it's not an erra I'd like to see repeated.