block-list

block list

Part of the social network portability effort.

introduction

Many social networking sites provide the user the capability to "block" or "ignore" other users of those sites, typically because those other users are stalking, trolling, harrassing, or behaving negatively in some other way.

The "block list" effort documents how current social networking sites are handling these interactions in the hopes that this research can be used for developing a portable block list that a user could privately share with other sites (probably via oauth or openid or both) so that they could block a troll on one service, and have the troll automatically blocked on other services as well.

examples

The following services have a block or ignore feature.

• Flickr ("block this user" link when viewing a user's profile)
• Twitter ("block ((username))" link when viewing a user's profile, just under their friends list)

terminology

verbs

Berbs or actions in user interfaces that implement blocking/ignoring.

• "block" is used by Flickr and Twitter
• "Remove block?" is used by Flickr on your block list page.
  • on the profile page of a person that is block it says: "You're blocking ((username)). Undo?" where "Undo" is hyperlinked to a page that confirms the unblock.
• "unblock" is used by Twitter.

nouns

• "block list" is used by Flickr in the "Your Block List" hyperlink to the list of people you have blocked, see the bottom of your user contacts page, i.e. http://flickr.com/people/username/contacts/ where username is your "pretty URL" username on Flickr.

formats

Previous attempts at block list formats:

• usenet/netnews kill files

brainstorming

• XEN

issues

Does a block list need to represent levels of animosity? Most examples in the wild are binary: either someone is blocked or they aren't (unlike XFN or other buddy list taxonomies that allow for degrees of intimacy and clarity).

see also

• social-network-portability
• hcard-xfn-supporting-friends-lists