Thanks for all the replies, this has been interesting and educational. I've learned that muting is still more widely used than blocking, often because people (a) see blocking as more punitive somehow (b) believe unpleasent people derive satisfaction from being blocked
I've also had further depressing confirmation of the huge differences in the experiences of white men on twitter and those of women or BAME tweeters. The latter are much more likely to block a lot, because they (a) get more hate hurled their way (b) often have safety concerns
Whereas white men generally raised irritating behaviour more than out and out hate, and I don't think one raised any safety/security issues.
In terms of my own practice, I have evolved from "never mute or block", to "mute offensive/annoying people but never block" to "block anyone who doesn't show basic manners and an open mind". I was curious as to how this compared to others.
Seems a fair few have either started with similar practices or evolved in a similar direction. I think the reasons I have become more trigger happy with the block button are (a) growing unwillingness to accept agression and rudeness
(b) growing belief that people who argue in bad faith/agressively/tribal nonsense basically never change so there's no value trying to get them to
(c) Unwillingness to have such people as part of my conversations even if I can't see them (followers get in args with them)
(c) Unwillingness to have such people as part of my conversations even if I can't see them (followers get in args with them)
I think I still default to a "explain, warn then block if no apology and retraction" model, but increasingly if an inspection of the profile and TL suggests they fall into the "hopeless case" category I just block immediately (as I do for bots etc).
There are also certain ignorant tweets people frequently make which lead me to immediately mute or block because I've seen and argued against them a thousand times and frankly I'm just bored of it.
I think the best rule of thumb someone offered was along the lines of "how would you react if someone you didn't know well said this to you in person?" Kind of captures the intuitive rationale I apply in using the mute/block buttons.
