The useless, frustrating, and utterly dangerous "block" feature
Like most of you, I use discord every day to keep in touch with friend groups. However, I've run into countless issues trying to block someone who is my friend's friend, but not my friend. Put simply, they're annoying and I'd rather not ever meet the misfortune of stumbling across anything they say.
Why is the block feature so poorly implemented?
As it stands, users I've "blocked" can still:
- view my messages
- see me in voice channels
- listen to me in voice channels
- watch my streams in voice channels
- see when I'm online (if in a mutual server, I think)
- see my profile picture, status, and, worst of all, linked accounts
- make unread notification indicator in servers
And I can still:
- click to see their messages
- watch their video calls in voice channels AND IT POPS UP AUTOMATICALLY WHEN THEY TURN THEIR CAMERA ON (this is probably the most egregious)
- watch their streams in voice channels
- hear them in voice channels unless I mute them manually
- see their profile picture and status
And I'm sure I'm missing a lot of other shortcomings of this feature. This is insane. Why is it so impossible to actually block someone in a meaningful way? Discord has literally implemented AI screening of DMs to filter explicit images, but cannot provide its users with the basic tools needed to keep certain users out of your online life. It's beyond dangerous to neglect this basic safety feature.
Discord is no stranger to permissions. Out of all its competitors, it offers the best, most granular control over server, role, and channel permissions. Why not offer a similar experience for blocking? I understand that it would be near impossible for someone to moderate a user who has them blocked, but there's ways to fix that. For instance, implement a feature that allows server moderators to automatically ban users who block them if they wish (while preferably keeping the user anonymous).
Another possible counterargument is complications filing reports on users who have you blocked, but once again, there must be a work-around. Blocking users shouldn't completely purge their messages from discord servers or anything, so I don't see why discord would struggle to moderate in situations where one user has the other blocked. Create an avenue for users to navigate reporting people who have them blocked. I'd suggest a system where users may still access message IDs and timestamps, but not the content of the messages from the other user. Blocking a user could also freeze you from deleting any of your messages in DMs with them since they're hidden from the blocked user anyways, so the messages can be reviewed in a report. Blocked users should still be able to see their own messages in DMs. If users can roughly estimate where an incident occurred using the context of their own messages (and others too, if in a server/group DM), then give the message IDs to discord staff, discord should not have many issues issuing bans. Many other platforms have robust blocking features and can still moderate their platforms.
I'd also imagine less people would feel inclined to report other users for non-bannable offenses if they had access to better blocking permissions. I'm no expert on these kinds of topics so I'm only suggesting these things because they make the most sense to me. However from a common-sense standpoint, discord would have to come up with a pretty elaborate excuse to not implement some actual blocking features.
In my case I'm lucky. This user is no danger to me. It's not a matter of reporting them to discord or the police. But imagine being in that situation where someone is harassing, threatening, or is just plain creepy. Reporting takes time. Reporting doesn't always work, whether it be to discord or the police. You'd have to completely remove yourself from every mutual server, manually delete all of your messages in DMs, group DMs, and in servers, and then pray you never encounter that user again in order to effectively block them. At that point just delete your account.
Discord is not all that safe until blocking is an actually useful feature.
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Say it louder for the people at Discord HQ!
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The fact that this is still a problem being so obviously ignored by Discord is insane. How many people is it going to take before they pull their heads out of their asses? Nobody is going to just shut up about the broken block system lol. It’s completely disappointing. Until this feature is fixed, not a single other update or “thank you” from them matters, because they’re not even listening. They’re not even pretending to listen.
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I had to leave my favorite server due to harassment. I will eventually stop using discord (and paying for nitro) due to the useless block feature.
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