There may be an age or generational explanation for this, but I especially notice this behavior on Reddit while not nearly as much here on Lemmy (though maybe that’s also a mater of implementation).
It seems many are so quick to assert overly-confident positions, but then hit-and-run with some smarmy remark at even the slightest challenge, then quickly block. Like, not even crazy stuff. Just basic, civil disagreements. I can pretty well predict when it will happen, and it always feels like such a petty ego-sparing fingers-in-ears denial thing to do, and to me if anything shows they were not very confident in their views being challenged.
I think I’ve only blocked a handful of people over a decade who were actively spamming, stalking, or spewing extremely hateful rhetoric and I just reported them simultaneously. You have to cross a pretty extreme and irrational line for me to do that.
The reason I ask is to see if I’m missing something; to better understand the mindset of those who do.
On both Reddit and Lemmy, blocking someone prevents them from replying. It prevents them from even seeing your final word*
* sort of. Depending on exactly where and how they look.
I might be wrong, but I was under the assumption that Lemmy doesn’t stop them from replying. There was a recent conversation complaining because blocking people didn’t silence them.
If you want to test it, feel free to reply and block me, I’ll see if I can keep the conversation going. Unblock later tonight to see if it worked.
I guess Reddit does it that way, but I try not to think about that place anymore.
I don’t believe they are blocked from replying on Lemmy. That’s the opposite of what I’ve heard, but I haven’t really experimented.
Pretty sure it doesn’t do that on lemmy. I definitely have comments with blocked responses (they show up a specific way in Jerboa) from people I blocked ages ago. If I open the thread in a browser where I’m not signed in I can see their response clearly.
So they can still see and reply to my comments, I just don’t have to see more than an error message that the comment couldn’t be loaded on my end.