this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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Wait, how can you see the comment if you're blocked? What's the point of blocking then lmao
If you block someone, you don't have to see their posts or comments.
The point is that I think I can see what they say but they can't see what I say. But I think that it is something of an oversight in the lemmy system. Basically like a shadow ban to some degree. Idk how it works, I am simply speculating, but I have absolutely seen people who have blocked me's comments about me, with them thinking I can't see it.
It is kind of wild to me that anyone would think that blocking someone = making it so they can't see you. To my knowledge, that is never how it worked. It's not how it worked on old school forums and boards, it's not how it worked on reddit, it's not how it ever worked on hexbear or lemmy in general. Maybe it's how it worked on twitter and that's why there are apparently some people who are confused about it, but I don't know, I never used twitter or clones like bluesky.
No, when person A blocks person B, all that results in is that person A will no longer see anything that person B posts. Person B is essentially unaffected. When you block someone, you are applying a filter to what you see, not to what they see. So you are correct about how it works, but I would not call this an oversight in lemmy, it's simply always what it has meant to block someone. And it makes sense to me that it works this way because one user should not be able to dictate what another user is allowed to see of what is publicly posted, but a user should absolutely be able to choose what they themselves want to see - which is consistent with how blocking someone does work and should work.
Thanks for the insight!
I wasn't sure, but I kinda assumed that is how it worked for most things, but genuinely I have never been on the admin side of a board, and only ever on the posting side, and never usually caused enough fuss with individual users before to even notice, but I have seen it about three times in the last couple of months, so I am apparently starting to say enough stuff to piss people off enough to stop engaging with me.
It's a smart policy, really. However, it does lead to extremely funny things, like this, where I know that they are exaggerating whatever interaction we had.
Well on Reddit it's actually worse than that. If someone blocks you, not only are you unable to see their comments anymore, you're actually soft-banned from any comment chain in which they've commented. Like if you're in an argument with someone and they block you to ensure they get the last word, then someone else replies to one of your comments in that argument, you can't reply to that comment. It just errors out.