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by fjfbsufhdvfy 1420 days ago
They are indeed set up to waste people's time.

Blocking people leads to them searching for ways around your block really quickly. Making them waste time not realizing they have been blocked, such as endless retries or shadow bans, is much more effective at making them stop bothering you for a while longer. Time spent doing this is time they can't spend being malicious on your platform.

It's unfortunate when a non-malicious user gets caught in one of these traps...

2 comments

"Unfortunate"

Sounds like something a film villain would say when asked about collateral damage.

it is unfortunate that some people believe those pros outweigh the punishment inflicted on innocent users

it is better a thousand criminals/ spammers go free than a single innocent non-spammer be treated as if they are one

essentially the companies are shifting their own pain (with spammers) onto innocent users ("it's your problem now, suck it users, lol!!!")

> better a thousand criminals/ spammers go free than a single innocent non-spammer be treated as if they are one

Sounds like you never had to actually deal with such a spammer problem yourself

"its easier to just punish everybody than single out the person actually deserving of punishment" is actually a common defense of collective punishment

the equal and opposite response would be, "Sounds like you never had to actually deal with such a usability problem yourself", but I'm not interested in trying to devolve this discussion into one about you and me, instead of the topic