Almost all large, successful social networks have a block function that completely prevents users from interacting with the posts of other users that block them. This is necessary for a variety of reasons - in the same way that we have doors on our houses and restraining orders in the courts, not everyone feels safe talking to everyone else. Hive doesn't have this and I would like to explore the topic here...
I started using social networks in 2006 and they were very basic back then, I don't recall there being any kind of block functions on the first sites I used and it was never a problem for me. The audience there were generally considerate and intelligent, so no problems ever arose. Once Facebook and Twitter took over, that changed drastically.
With the growth of Silicon Valley Web 2 apps, now we had all manner of 'bad actors' seemingly spending countless hours attacking people and doing anything they could to cause disruption. Whether these kinds of attacks are aimed at one person or at an entire movement, they cause problems and plenty of people therefore value the block features of these networks in order to be able to create social spaces that are free from the noise and disruption that can so often be a problem for them.
Initially, I viewed block features as being a problem in that they were likely to generate 'echo chambers' where people only hear the messages that they already agree with and also cause people to avoid facing their own errors by being challenged by others. However, as I have had more experiences and better understood the types of dysfunctions that exist within people, I recognise that the right to freedom of association which many hold so dear is as important as the right to freedom of speech.
Freedom of Association
The Wikipedia definition for 'Freedom of Association' begins:
Freedom of association encompasses both an individual's right to join or leave groups voluntarily, the right of the group to take collective action to pursue the interests of its members, and the right of an association to accept or decline membership based on certain criteria. It can be described as the right of a person coming together with other individuals to collectively express, promote, pursue and/or defend common interests
If we think about this it is apparent that this right is directly connected to Freedom of speech. We can't have freedom of speech if there is a fear that saying certain things will result in being attacked by those involved in the conversation. So if we are going to promote Hive as a freedom of speech network, we also need to think about how to enshrine support for freedom of association.
Freedom of Association on Hive
At present we have limited support for protection of this right on Hive. We can mute accounts, similar to the way that we can mute on Twitter/X, but we cannot currently completely block accounts in similar ways.
This has created a situation where anyone can speak on anyone's threads and the most that people can do to 'protect' their space is to effectively hold a mask over their own eyes to ensure they don't see the posts made by certain people. This is not truly support for freedom of association.
Paradoxically, the ability to block users from your own posts actually supports freedom of speech, despite it also involving blocking the speech of certain people! As has been stated many times, freedom of speech is not also the right to be heard - we all have the right to choose to hear what we want to hear.
Having looked through the tables in the Hive database, I can see that there is already a block table, though as far as I am aware it is so far unused. What if we were to activate this? Has this conversation even been had on Hive before?
Since the nature of the content on the blockchain is public, the most that a block feature could viably do at this point is to prevent people from commenting on threads owned by people who have opted to block them. Arguably, this is a middle ground between the kind of blocking feature that we see on X/Twitter that results in users being completely unable to view the posts/profile of people who have blocked them.. and having no blocking ability at all.
I wonder if adding this feature will be a 'low hanging fruit' improvement to the blockchain that can allay some of the concerns of users of Web 2 networks who like the idea of Hive, but who will not come here due to their concerns about troublesome users who have already hassled them on Web 2. It might not be obvious to many of us, but there are a surprisingly high number of people who get stalked, harassed and abused online to a degree that they simply can't use networks that have no blocking whatsoever.
Your Comments?
What do you think/feel about this? Do you want to see such a feature added to Hive? Do you have any thoughts on the technical feasibility and impact of it? Let us know in the comments!
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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