Most social media sites have options for muting and blocking people. As we know, muting is one-way (they see me, I don't see them) and blocking is two-way (neither see each other).

Recently, while having too much caffeine in my system way too late, I had the thought that "blocking" is a far more negative term than what it should be. Sometimes it's done in spite, absolutely. You wanna slap somebody for being how they are.

But sometimes you just recognize that there's someone who you have nothing against, whom you might even like if you met them in real life, but in this context of limited human connect, you understand that the only possible communication between you and them would be toxic. That your opinions, your way of speaking, perhaps your whole existence offends them. Or vice versa.

So you protect them from yourself by blocking them, in lieu of a better word. I think there should be a better word but I haven't figured out what it should be yet. "Spare"?

(P.S. I think tildes should perhaps have such a functionality)

I'm one of the moderators of a small / medium community. I've been doing it for around a year, with no prior experience at moderating or helping to foster an online community.

We have a section for jokes and humour, and somebody posted one of those "train dilemma" memes. It gave the choice of letting the train hit one of several groups of people. It was general enough to not name anyone specific. The options were similar to:

Let the train hit:
a) Nintendo developers
b) Sony developers
c) Microsoft developers

Fine. A bit crass, but hardly shocking.

A commenter then replied by stating they don't mind which, so long as x well known developer is shot.

Now that really threw me.

The moderation team have been divided over it, although not strongly so. We are all generally in favour of removing it. But we are concerned about over-stepping and of course the topic of free-speech has arisen.

As it came up with us, I'll also mention that there are no specific rules of the website, or this specific sub-community, to state such humour is disallowed.

Where is the line drawn with free-speech? We would certainly remove anything pro-fascism, racist, homophobic or grossly offensive, but we do have rules that cover those.

I'd be really keen to hear any views on how you would approach this and how you would justify your decision.