Regular reminder that the “block” feature of mastodon most likely does not do what you think it does, especially if you are used to block features from centralised social media services.

Regular reminder that the “block” feature of mastodon most likely does not do what you think it does, especially if you are used to block features from centralised social media services.

First of all, “block” is not a feature buiit into activitypub. it is a feature that was hacked in after the fact by mastodon.

when you block someone on mastodon

1. follow/follower relations are removed

2. maybe sometimes, but inconsistently, notifications from the person are muted, sometimes, inconsistently, posts out in the wild from the person are hidden from you; enforfced by your own server.

3. a block activity is published. This information is not private, and blocks on bluesky being public is not a point difference fediverse users get to brag about

4. What other servers do with that publically published block activity is entirely up to them. It might be to honor the block by hiding your posts from the user, if they happen to be a user on the instance. It might be nothing. it might be making your attempt to block a visibly published post for the purposes of increasing harassment efforts towards you.

5. every time i have pointed these things out some dude who has studied the activitypub protocol way less than I have usually comes along to try and correct me. When I prove them wrong they throw up their hands and declare that if i post on the fediverse I should have no expectation of privacy, respect for my boundaries, or respect for my consent and I am foolish for wanting better designed protocols

6. one of the co-authors of activitypub then usually slides in to apologise for the mess