Originally a comment by Artymorty on Empowering the bullies.

I think the block feature is an absolute necessity to prevent harassment.

It’s true that mass-blocking tools were bad: the promotion of block-lists to true believers to get them to isolate themselves from dissenting views was a move straight out of the Scientology playbook. But I don’t think that problem — which appears to have largely abated anyway; I don’t hear about mass block-lists anymore — merits getting rid of the block feature altogether.

Very often we have to be able to block specific accounts from replying to our posts, because they harass us. It’s true that people can create sockpuppet accounts to circumvent blocks, but very often harassers want to reply under their real identities, with their main accounts that have amassed large followings, not under anonymous accounts with few followers.

Not all accounts are equal — some have vastly more reach than others — and we need to be able to block the accounts that have amassed large followings and use them for targeted harassment.

Muting isn’t good enough either. If someone’s following you around the internet and bringing along a gang to shout lies about you every time you speak, it’s not enough that you personally tune them out, because everyone else will see the lies.

Also, blocking harassers is a way to prevent them noticing when you speak. Once blocked, they would have to create a sockpuppet account and seek you out specifically in order to be notified when you tweet. Without that block feature, your speech could just show up in their twitter feed — an open invitation for them to harass you.

I can’t see how getting rid of the block feature will be anything but a disaster for victims of harassment.