It's annoying when someone you've replied to blocks you and then other people reply to you
But you can't reply to them because the higher up poster has you blocked
This I think gives too much power to the blocker.
It’s like they own the space below their note. One of the things I liked about Twitter, (when it was Twitter though I believe it’s the same on X) was that each tweet was treated as equal. There wasn’t a hierarchy in the sense that a reply to a tweet was not a lesser form of tweet than the tweet it was replying to.
So now there are three replies to my note from three different people but when I tried replying to one of them it let me compose my reply but then refused to post it, without much of an explanation. That was when I had the same page open, but now, in my Activity feed, those replies are visible to me but greyed out. If I try clicking on any of them I get “this note is not available”.
It hasn’t happened here but I wonder if someone could reply to you and then block you so you can’t reply to them, thus ensuring they get the last word. It appears the Substack Notes system would allow that. I could perhaps get the URL of one of those replies by logging out of Substack and then paste that into a reponse I post as a top-level note but that’s too much effort and I’m not sure if it’ll work. I don’t think it should be necessary to go to those lengths anyway.
Here’s how I’d adapt the functionality:
There should be a cost to blocking. It’s something the system should discourage whereas the way it functions currently on Substack allows it to be weaponised. People can use it to partially silence those they disagree with. At the very least, when someone has blocked someone who has replied to one of their notes, this should be indicated publicly on the thread. Those people replying to me should see that I won’t be able to reply to them because I’ve been blocked by Mike H.
When you view someone’s profile, in addition to how many subscribers they have, you should also see how many people they’ve blocked. Not necessarily who they’ve blocked, just the number. That way you could get an idea of whether someone is prone to blocking and, if they are, decide whether they’re worth engaging with. You would naturally expect large accounts, or those that are extremely active and have posted a lot of Notes, to block more people than smaller or less active accounts, so it would really be the ratio between blocks and audience size or activity level that mattered.
If people can respond to you, you should be able to respond back. If you’re an author of a publication then I get that you should be able to control who can comment under your posts, but on Notes we’re essentially on a social network rather than a publication and there should not be this kind of ownership. If someone has blocked me then I should not be able to reply directly to something they’ve posted, but I should be able to reply to someone who has replied to me.
I’d go with Twitter’s flat object model for Notes. All Notes are equal. Comments on publications are different and should be treated differently. By all means give authors control of the comments under their articles, but posters of notes should not own notes that are replies to their notes.