If you give people the ability to block others from being matchmade with them, they will use it to keep themselves from being matched with players who play poorly, but aren't at all toxic. At higher skill ranks, where the player pool is small and there is a high chance of being matched with the same players repeatedly, it has huge opportunity for abuse.
It is a good demonstration of why it is a hard problem, because you can't just implement the most naively obvious solution: you have to design against the abuse-case.
This is a problem which _can't_ be solved by a central authority. That's like asking the police to go around making people be nice to each other:
Yes, they can control the most blatant abuses (IRL: violence, theft, etc. -> Online: Cheating, DDosing, etc.), but they will never be able to - and should never have the right to - control for every possible sub-optimal communication. You yourself have the tools to do that (IRL: go away, call someone out, etc. -> online: Mute, Leave the game, etc.)
As for all the players "affected" by this problem: People should learn to chill out. In a virtual, anonymous setting, some people will use the opportunity to be mean to you. That's why muting and block was introduced. I don't get the big deal, even though a big number of people seem to be "affected".
Actually, one of the wort statements in the whole article:
"There’s no IRL and online anymore. This is just all reality now."
WTF? That is the _point_ of creating virtual spaces or play per se. If I want a dose of reality I might as well watch the news and do some bookkeeping.
No. This doesn't work in Overwatch. Because Blizzard removed this ability.
Right when Overwatch came out, you could select a player's profile and essentially tell Blizzard's algorithm that you didn't want to play with this person anymore (Avoid Player).
But Blizzard decided to remove it because they found out a very good Widowmaker (a sniper character) was being excluded by a ton of people so they decided to just remove the feature altogether so that scenario doesn't happen.
However, at the time the Widowmaker character was overpowered where Widowmaker should have just gotten a nerf to her abilities (she went through a nerf and a buff since then) but instead, nope, now you can't stop playing with toxic players until they've been banned by Blizzard.
Now blocking players just means, I don't want to read messages from them. It doesn't prevent players from throwing matches, which is the biggest issue since you can't "block" bad play
In some games that might be harder said then done, but you could at least make sure you are never on the same team, and that if the player becomes an opponent that its name is obfuscated and they can't chat back.
Would you say that's a solution for hackers, too? "Meh, just block them."
It could be simply having a MAGA hat on could be 'toxic'.
You also have to worry about /toxic/ group behavior. The masses are not always right. So just because somebody has had a lot of people report them does not mean they are toxic.
For any of this to work the very behavior that is not allowed must be defined to the T.
But anyways, This is not my argument, I was merely trying to correct the assumptions of a post. And suggesting that because some feature does not exist today is not a very good reason why a suggested solution can't work or should not be considered.
Being able to block someone and not be matched with them again is also a great mechanism to dodge better players. If you have a hard time beating a particular player? Block/report them, avoid being matched with them, and have an easier time winning.
Actually, I'm not sure block is the word blizzard used. Avoid, maybe? The end result was more or less the same.
It puts the onus on the people just trying to have fun to carefully manage and curate their experience just so they can have a good time.
These companies care and take these measures because as a player, if I open Overwatch and my first match of the day is full of assholes actively trying to ruin my experience instead of just playing the game, I'm just going to log off and not play anymore.