An administrative announcement.
Motherfuckers.
https://mastodon.cloud/media/oxNPAqhKHeUAAvMv1X8
Q: Someone is saying things on Mastodon / GNU Social / elsewhere that I don't like. What should I do?
A: If you know them, you might ask them not to. Otherwise, as a first step, especially if they're not directing the content at you specifically, Mute them.
If they are messaging you directly, Block them.
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/blob/master/docs/Using-Mastodon/User-guide.md#blocking
Q: What are the limitations of blocking?
A: Numbers. Identity. References and reshares. Disruption.
There are a lot of idiots in the world. If a given social space you're in is free of them, it is generally either very small, or has excellent gatekeeping. Usually the first. The problem is that staying small doesn't scale.
Identity online is asserted, not intrinsic, and generating new IDs is cheap. Absent checks on that, blocking someone who doesn't /want/ to be blocked is ... difficult.
This is a situation where collective or unified action, based on community impacts, comes into play.
If the consequences leak into real life -- relationships, employers, business relationships, gangs, politics, political unrest -- then you have a more significant problem for which simple solutions don't exist. But neither can Admin owners nor protocol developers wash their hands of them either. The committlog on this particular bug goes back about 6,000 years. Earlier records are lost.
References and reshares mean that even if you block a source directly, indirect references to them in threads will still fill your space. If this presents a problem to you, then it's a problem which blocking alone cannot address (or at least not simple origin-based blocking -- a source-and-replies filter might). Some reshares might also leak through.
If you're blocking someone because they create shitstorms wherever they go, then at the margin your own blocking won't improve the situation.