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@Popehat I just checked his account... it is real.
But the context is that he feels mute is sufficient and gets you all you need. Block makes no sense since users can still view your posts via proxy/public view anyway which is the only difference between a mute and block.
He kinda has a point... what is block getting you over a mute?
On the one hand, it sounds meaningful. On the other hand it is some cheap maximalism, like “since we can’t do something perfect, we won’t do it at all”.
Anyway, there are no reason to force people to use specific moderation instrument.
Im not sure its about lack of perfection so much as uselessness. People can browse anonymously, so blocking achieves effectively nothing.
The difference is making another account to circumvent a mute is against the rules and would get the account banned. Browsing anonymously is allowed and encouraged.
Im not sure what my opinion is honestly... once could say allowing blocking breaks the ability to browse publicly and anonymously by requiring extra steps (you need to logout or use a private tab). So you gain nothing by having the feature, but also make a different feature (anonymous/public browsing) work in weird and unexpected ways.
I used to be an android dev for the app which owner was obsessed with some complex weird visual features, and the app code was horrible.
And sometimes i really wanted to say "man this shit makes no sense, it does nothing but requires a lot of work, can better focus on something actually meaningful?". To be honest, i doubt that "anonymous browsing feature" is a problem, because it's not the way that app intended to be used, and developers aren't responsible for it (as well as they aren't responsible for work of third-party userscripts or something like that). But i quite admit that blocking implementation is somehow fucked up, so it would be easier to remove instead of supporting and/or refactoring it.
But the truth is that most inernet users are not obsessed stalker maniacs, and they are at least too lazy to engage in such nonsense. So, block is not that bad tool to suspend communication with someone in both directions.