How it could work
Imagine Alice is being harassed by a troll or group of trolls we will call Malcolm. Currently she has the ability to mute them, but they can still see her, still see how much money she is making, still plot against her and negatively effect her user experience.
What if she could remove herself from their attention specifically without effecting anyone else?
Selective Channels
Selective channels would allow Alice to create a list of users who can no longer see her posts on the Steemit site. Instead of protecting herself from their hostile posts, she protects them from being triggered by her posts. Alice would simply select to remove Malcolm from having the privilege of experiencing and interacting with her. The idea is if they want to see her posts in order to stalk and harass her, they now have to go the extra mile and put forth greater effort by going off site to analyze the blockchain. This would move the problem off the Steemit site entirely.
This is a user interface and user experience issue
It does not require sophisticated cryptography. Alice would simply make a blacklist based upon whatever criteria and all accounts in this list will simply not see any of her posts. Her posts will be censored only to the people she doesn't want to see her. This gives her the power to reduce the amount of negative attention she receives through this website.
Each account would require a personalized user interface. Personalized to the point where the people who disconnect from them cannot be seen by them, so they wont be able to follow their posts anymore, find their feeds, or see their posts anywhere. Even if its the top trending post, they shouldn't be able to see it without going to another site.
And this would help solve the problem of harassment in a low privacy environment. Accounts would have to download data which gives them a more personalized user experience. It also has to be recognized that the originator of content does have the ability to control who accesses their content and them at least while on Steemit. On the blockchain everything is open.
The essence of this is the blogger gets to select their audience or select their followers or *exclude certain people from being able to follow them, reply to their posts, or even see their posts.
Mute must become Disconnect
And to disconnect must mean to remove all communication channels between the two people. Either side should be able to initiate this. Anyone should be able to determine the attention flow through the user interface, where if Alice disconnects from Malcolm, then Malcolm can't find anything from Alice on Steemit anymore, but the reverse, Alice also can't find anything from Malcolm, so that the mute is multiplex.
@dana-edwards Great post and thoughts!
A 'MUTE' to not only mute someone, but to also mute yourself to them. Creating a muted connection into disconnect(ion). The multiplex mute. An activate-able multiplex mute function!
This is a GREAT Idea! All mute does is change the color of the text IMHO!...I'm for this! If Facebook can 'block'...we should be able to 'disconnect'...I spent the whole d@mned day yesterday fighting a cut & paste troll that tore my posts apart to make me defend myself to him...it was continous badgering!...sure I want a free decentralized chain...but it's getting ridiculous now...I have ANOTHER troll that insists on mother-effing me and calling me a 'faggot' on ALL of my posts & comments (insulting the ENTIRE LGBTQ Community)...we can get this installed...but it's REALLY going to take a 'virtual sherriff' to stop this completely & rid these pests from the chain...Somebody to literally spend the days policing this platform for abusers! @ned & @dantheman ...We 'minnows' are getting crushed here! I spend time on Facebook just to get away from this! Pay me off in steem & I will spend all my time picking off 'trolls'...you can COUNT on it!
"whole d@mned day yesterday fighting a cut & paste troll that tore my posts apart to make me defend myself to him...it was continous badgering!...sure I want a free decentralized chain...but it's getting ridiculous now"
You can also report abuse in the rocket channel steemitabuse-classic. tell them what's going on and they will help!
Great suggestion @dana-edwards! Just like in real life, people get to selectively choose who they interact with. Negative attention consumes quite a bit of energy, and the Steemit community is benefited when users can exercise their preferences for interactions. We appreciate that you're offering realistic solutions to the issue! We hope to see something like this implemented.
Great idea. Sad to say as Steemit grows trolls will become a greater problem. I like the idea of adding in a Disconnect option as well as keeping the mute option. I see both as having their benefits.
There is now way you can hide yourself on steemit as the blockchain is public.
Even if devs implement it on steemit.com, one could easily go to another website (like steemdb.com) to see what's happening on your account.
The same is also valid : nothing prevent you to get posts/replies from someone.
Once again, steemit.com could implement it but they are several other ways to post/reply.
Anyway, having a filter implemented on steemit.com is a great idea.
But again, if it's not implemented on other sites exposing the blockchain, this can be useless.
It's not useless. It raises the cost to the attacker who now has to put forth more effort to harass someone.
exactly. It makes it more difficult to cause issues, and interacting on a blockchain is not where the fun is.
Unfortunately, the harasser probably has multiple accounts. They would set one up for "observing" and one for "abusing".
Given this reality it could be relatively simple to prevent muted individuals from replying to a thread. This would force the abuse to move to different threads or force the abuser to use an alternative interface.
This is something that we could implement at a blockchain level.
Hello! How can I sen PM to you?
Genius idea. Have you submitted this to Dan and Ned yet? I think this is the solution that could make so many users happy. Everything is publicly available on the blockchain, of course, but Steemit gets better because users have the ability to decide who they want and don't want to interact with. Interaction should be a privilege not a right, just like it is in real life.
I've never had anyone harass me yest, but this is good to know in case they do.
or just report for abuse tab next to poster
Disconnect is more simple. Once you disconnect from someone you don't see their posts anymore and they don't see yours. Both of you cease to exist to each other on the Steemit website.
Great idea @dana-edwards.
I agree that would work much better than the current mute function
At first glance, this seems like a good idea to me. The data for who is disconnecting from who, needs to be stored either in the blockchain, for all steemit clients to use, or a centralized database on the same server that steemit.com is on, for use just by steemit.
I'll check back and see the thoughts of other commentors. I hope we get a good discussion going here.
would be agreat concept. cos the ability to block abuse or stocking on onces post is a great tool to have
I think disconnect is good idea to avoid seeing people that you dont like. Is this feature already existed or not yet?
Great idea, but I don't think Alice would be able to hide her posts and wallet. If Malcolm opens a new private window in his browser and goes to https://steemit.com/steem/@[username] he will be able to see all her posts and her wallet.
You can't hide on Steemit. :-(
I think if steemit implements this disconnect feature, they could also block the data from the URL you mentioned, for those people that are disconnected. There are other clients of the steem blockchain where a person could see this blocked data, but maybe they would also implement the same disconnect feature. If every client did that, the stalker could still find the data but they would need to program their own client to do so.
Sure but the point is he would have to increasingly go out of his way. She can also block his IP address.
It's very easy to open a private window in most browsers.
Sorry, that wouldn't help. Malcolm is using the Opera browser, a browser with inbuilt free-of-charge VPN.
IP address could be used. But if someone is willing to go on a VPN just to harass someone then after a certain point there is nothing you can do. If a person is willing to invest unlimited time and resources into attacking someone it's not like you can stop it.
So? If I'm being harassed and I filter out innocent Steemians then that would be my choice? It wouldn't block the IP address from accessing Steemit.com, it would only block the IP address from accessing my content on Steemit.com. If I don't want people behind certain VPNs to access my content then i should be able to block the entire IP range if I choose.
The point is to make harassment inconvenient, it's never going to be impossible.
Blocking an IP address is not possible because that would block many innocent Steemians. Due to the shortage of IPv4 addresses many ISPs outside America use Carrier-grade NAT (CGN) for their residential customers. Customers with ISPs using CGN) share the same IPv4 address as many other customers. Blocking an IPv4 address will block all Steemians sharing the same IPv4 address, not only Malcolm.
Just one click in your Opera browser and you are on VPN (5 countries to choose between). As simple as clicking on a link. No subscription or account is needed - free of charge. "Malcolm" loves the Opera browser. :-)
I understand your post and I'm sure Steemit Inc. will find a solution if/when harassment becomes a problem, but blocking IP addresses is not a solution.
Steemit is an open platform where you even can see the wallets of other members and it's difficult to "hide".
I think we should dogpile them.
I'm sure we have enough computer knowledge collectively to troll them back.
If trolling got you dogpiled, derided, and harassed the trolls will go back to fedbook.
I get that the genders have very different experiences online and blocking is the simplest answer.
I just prefer that the community keeps it's misbehavers in line collecitvely rather than the ban hammer from god being used to just silence them.
They may have a point.
Ignoring for months on end does not work. Disconnect seems like the only option.
So you are saying that nobody has stepped up and offered to help you?
That is terrible, what kind of community do we have here?
This is a great idea and shouldn't be too difficult to implement. I've started to see some crap here on Steemit in the last week that I had hoped we would all be able to avoid. Unfortunately it has arrived and the only way to keep it from tearing Steemit apart in it's infancy it to add some controls like this one.
If Alice can disconnect from anyone, then ok. Good way to avoid nazi-curators.
Some good/needed suggestions here. Hope Steemit/steemers can develop equitable solutions soon.
I added your feature request to the latest edition of the Steemit Wish List. The development team including @ned and @dantheman have been viewing the list, so hopefully this will give your request more attention.
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