There was an issue on Reddit a while back where people would post some hateful stuff, and of course lots of people blocked them.
After a while, anti-trans, racist, and far-right-wing stuff were only seen by non-logged in users, other bigots, or new people, and they weren’t getting the downvotes they deserved.
Is this going to be a problem on Lemmy too? I’m worried that if we’re all blocking shitty users that we’re just hiding the problem from ourselves, not fixing it.
The problem with that approach depends on the issue we’re talking about. To continue picking on the Nazis: allowing them to “just ask questions” for example is a great way to allow them to spread their ideology in a way that thoughtful moderation could prevent.
If someone reads a few posts and comments and suddenly becomes a Nazi, then that person would have already been a psycho. If you read some ideology then is that going to happen to you?
That’s nonsense - bad ideologies take hold in “normal” people all the time! I’m sure we all have that one uncle who was taken in by all the Q-anon talk, or that one friend who ended up joining a cult.