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Comment by xurukefi | Hacker News Reader

As somebody who doesn't use Twitter actively, I don't understand why you would ever want to block someone. If you're sick of someone, why not just mute them? Blocking seems to be kind of a childish option because you want the other person to know that they are blocked. The idea that you want to actively disable someone from reading your tweets seems absolutely bananas to me.

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If someone is harassing you on Twitter, muting them doesn't stop them from interacting with your tweets. You don't see it anymore, but people looking at your tweets still do, so now people see things attached to your tweets you have no idea about.

Some also argue that its better someone is explicitly told "you can't interact with this person" vs them trying and it getting hidden silently and them having no idea they can't reach you that way, and thus suggest blocking over mute also for people who didn't attack you. (A "don't show this person unless they directly talk to me" would be nice to have instead)

This is something that took me years to grok about Twitter. Each tweet creates a forum that is solely moderated by the tweeter. Mod powers include blocking people (which removes all their replies from the forum and from any other forum you create in future, as well as blocks them from seeing your tweets), and locking the whole forum (making it read-only except for named people).

Blocking somebody who is harassing you seems to be a very bad idea. You're actively telling them that they're blocked. They can create a new account to work around this. Muting is much more efficient because it does not give any feedback and thus does not provoke any further escalation.

Depends on the situation. E.g. many probably rather know if lies are spread about them in the replies, even if it means dealing with new accounts popping up.

In addition to detaro's comment, it also stops them from retweeting you from their high-profile account in order to cause a "pileon" of abusive messages to you.

Of course people routinely work around blocks, mutes, and account suspensions by posting screenshots of tweets, but there the interactions are de-automated - you can't reply to the screenshot, you'd have to dig up the original tweet author.

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