I had to block a few users yesterday. Today, I noticed about ten notifications from users I’ve blocked—they replied to me, continued to make up lies about my heritage, and I continued to see their comments in my notifications.
It seems that the only effect of my blocking them is that I can no longer see their comments in context—although I am still notified of their harassment. This is quite the opposite effect from the one I was going for—I mean, I’m happy to spend less time engaging with them, but the block feature seems to be guaranteeing these bigots the “last word” and preventing me from even reporting them. They can then follow me anywhere on kbin and continue to harass me, the block function is only stopping me from doing anything about it.
At least one of these users is on the same instance as I am, kbin.social.
Why doesn’t blocking work?
I’m not aware of any other platform where a blocked user can reply to a blocking user, but it certainly isn’t possible on Reddit.
It used to be possible on Reddit, and people didn’t like the change to how it is now. Because of how it can be (and is being) abused.
A blocked user could never respond to a blocking user on Reddit, to my knowledge. I believe you’re confused.
I’ve never been blocked, so I might be wrong there. But the last word problem was the main reason I’ve seen people hate the move to the current blocking system, so I assumed it didn’t exist before.
Edit: Reddit’s official announcement for the new system does explicitly mention they’re changing it so you can’t interact with users that blocked you anymore. Which implies you could before.