Lite Blocking

November 5th, 2019
ideas, tech
There are people I would like to interact less with online: perhaps they post inane things, perhaps they pull comment threads off in bad directions, perhaps they make terrible arguments for things I agree with. The standard tools social networks offer for this sort of situation are:
  • Blocking: you can't see their stuff, they can't see your stuff, you can't interact.

  • Hiding: you don't see their stuff, or you see less of it. You can still interact.

I'd like another tool:
  • Lite blocking: as if they'd hidden you.

Social networks generally have far more things they could show you than you'll be able to look at. To prioritize they use inscrutable algorithms that boil down to "we show you the things we predict you're going to like." You can think of hiding as "dramatically lower the prediction that I would like seeing their stuff," and lite blocking as "dramatically lower the prediction that they would like seeing my stuff."

Lite blocking could be symmetrical or not, but the important thing to me is that the network would stop encouraging people to interact with me if I don't want those interactions.

Perhaps I should just block people? I'm glad blocking exists, and there are times when it's the right tool. But other times it's much too powerful:

  • Blocking is obvious, but with the level of "who knows why the things decided to show me what it did" lite blocking maintains plausible deniability. This is important for people you want to avoid interacting with but need to stay on good terms with for other reasons.

  • Blocking is too thorough. Maybe I don't like the way you tend to come into threads I host and derail them, but I'd still like you to be able to find our past discussions and reference them if intentionally seek them out.

  • Groups often have high thresholds for kicking people out, but an in-between level where someone would just see fewer group posts in their feed would be helpful in cases where the moderators think someone's posts are generally making the group worse.

Since lite blocking explicitly overrides the network's prediction about how much someone will like things, you could imagine a change to add it being difficult to get past launch review. It would probably look bad on the core metrics, with a decrease in estimated user satisfaction and engagement. But the metrics don't capture the ways "so and so isn't showing up in my discussions any more" would make others happier and improve their experience using the network.

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong

Recent posts on blogs I like:

A Big Problem With The Going To Bed Book

One day my dad was reading this book called the "Going to Bed Book" to my sister Nora. The book is basically about a bunch of animals who are getting ready for bed on a boat. They go down the stairs, take a bath, hang their towels on the wall, find…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts September 18, 2023

Investing in boundaries with young kids

Putting in some work to get the behavior you want The post Investing in boundaries with young kids appeared first on Otherwise.

via Otherwise August 15, 2023

Self-driving car bets

This month I lost a bunch of bets. Back in early 2016 I bet at even odds that self-driving ride sharing would be available in 10 US cities by July 2023. Then I made similar bets a dozen times because everyone disagreed with me. The first deployment to pot…

via The sideways view July 29, 2023

more     (via openring)