@geth I understand your point. But I have two reasons for this:

1. The really stupid jokes are coming from the side of politics with which there is no reasoning, and the offence/cruelty is their point.

2. For the rest, it might be the shock they need to realise they are being hurtful, and that they *will* be called out on this.

So far I've only blocked one person over this, so...I think most Mastodon users are already aware of the issue.

@anathema_device @geth Having spent years trying to educate people and give them second chances (professionally) - It doesn't work; especially around things like #pronouns. If one in ten thousand people listen to a first warning, it would be considered a win, unfortunately.

I did once consider auto banning people who listed deliberately shitty pronouns (especially the ubiquitous "Apache Attack Helicopter") but people pointed out that it's better to leave them so people are forewarned.

@Lorry @anathema_device was it the same people? I think the thing people (gen.z and older) need to realise is that there is a tsunami of change coming from the younger generations. It's their world now. We had our chance. You may as well try to hold it back as fart in the face of a supernova. I, for one, welcome our fresh faced overlords 😄. I think it's not only intolerance that we're fighting but fear of obsolescence. Your one in a thousand is at least one. Maybe that one will also convince one in a thousand...

@geth @anathema_device I mean I am not against the idea in some arenas, but in this case (on a popular, once queer-friendly dating site) one trolling crappy user can drive 10+ genuine users who would benefit from the service away. So heavy handed moderation is good for everyone both socially AND commercially, even though it's hard to convince bean-counters that banning more people actually leads to more users.

@Lorry @geth And we're not even talking moderation here. It's one user's (mine) personal policy.

@anathema_device @geth Oh I know, and one I agree with :) I was just noting that second chances just don't anecdotally seem to work, even on a mass scale.

@Lorry @geth Agreed. People who do this are rarely clueless, and for those that are, the benefits of just blocking or banning them straight up far outweighs the minor inconvenience to that individual.

They create an account with a profile which doesn't cause offence, if they want to.

They usually don't want to.

@anathema_device @Lorry moderation is great for a community. A lot of the nicest happiest groups I'm in are heavily moderated. But there's a few different ways to skin a hedgehog 🤷

Maybe it was optimistic of me to think the op was talking about unthinking dad jokes rather than trolling.

I admit that I don't deal with this regularly, so I should probably keep my big fat yap shut. I'm always learning though, hey so thank you both for engaging with me. I still love that we can have discussions like this on this platform without it becoming heated. It feels much more like a pub argument with friends than a slanging match.

@anathema_device do mastodonians get notified if they're blocked? (I'm quite new to this, and that throws new light on blocking my wife 😬😬😬😆)

Then yes! Especially if they know why. I lost a few followers over the last few days. I have no idea if it was something I said - if it was I have no idea what!

@geth no.

But honestly, they know what they're doing.

@anathema_device also my comment influenced by just not seeing any of those folks yet on mastodon (I'm sure that's just down to luck). Id probably think differently if we we're having this convo on twitter :)