If you find yourself on the wrong side of my blocking policy – don’t take it as a personal offence. I apply the exact same policy to everyone.
I don’t issue warning or threats – if you break my policy I block without warning – and I certainly don’t either take offence at being blocked nor take any delight at blocking others.
Blocking Policy
I have a simple policy on twitter. I avoid blocking anyone** unless that person either threatens or does block or mute me. Then irrespective of whether I like the individual, whether I agree/disagree, I take a threat or actual muting/blocking as as a signal that they do no wish further discussion with me and I will block them irrespective of who they are.
If you don’t want a conversation to continue – just say. If you really don’t want to hear me – I don’t want to waste my time on you – so block me – but remember it’s very difficult to talk to someone you’ve blocked, so it’s largely a one way street.
And if you threaten or tell me you will mute me, I always block, It’s that simple.
The reason I don’t mute people and treat a mute as the same as a block, is firstly because when I tried muting one individual they just kept posting on my conversations and so I realised that muting was not the answer – because people take offence and then start making stupid remarks behind your back, and secondly if someone is muted – no matter if a friend or foe – they have no idea they are muted and can waste a lot of their time responding to tweets. That’s highly disrespectful – if you don’t want a conversation with me – then stop talking or block me. Don’t talk about blocking me, don’t mute me, and certainly don’t threaten to mute me – just ask me to stop, or stop replying to my tweets or if that’s your wish block me.
Unblocking Policy
I’ve never had anyone ask – however, if anyone did ask – I think the answer is yes (except for the very few below**).
As for me asking to be unblocked – I’ve only tried once, to a certain sceptic many years ago. He never explained why he was blocking me when he blocked me and refused to respond to me in any way through a third party. From that episode I learnt that it was impossible to have a reasonable conversation after a mute/block – so I don’t try.
**There are a few people I actively block:
- Those like Mann, who are known to block anyone who disagrees with them and others who I know or suspect of telling blatant falsehoods. I don’t want to hear their views and pre-emptively block them.
- Perhaps as few as four people, who have gone beyond what is acceptable. One for allowing racist comments on their blog and refusing to remove them. Another for effectively stalking me on twitter. Another for repeatedly posting tweets when they were totally clueless about the subject and incapable of responding to any tweets explaining why they were wrong. In each case, the person showed a repeated pattern of unacceptable behaviour over weeks if not months.
If I’m being honest blocking someone for ‘racist comments’ is pretty petty and dumb. It just goes to show that there’s no argument against racism and creates an echo chamber on both sides, allowing both opinions to ferment into something worse.
It was a lot more than just the racist comments, but there whole attack on truth and honesty in the climate debate.
For example, they were involved in a vicious attack on an academic who did nothing more than draw the appropriate scientific conclusion from the evidence: that changes in CO2 were at least partly natural. That is what any reasonable appraisal of the evidence showed, but telling the simple truth was totally unacceptable for that arrogant biased bigot. The racist comments were just the final straw that proved to me, that it wasn’t just that we disagreed on climate but that they were just a nasty individual and not someone I ever wanted to have any dealings with.