So, there’s a inherent problem with blocking working both ways on a forum style site or platform like Lemmy.

When you block someone and the block goes through, if it works both ways, that means your comments or exchanges with that person disappear. The problem with that? They disappear for you and the person you blocked. Anyone else who comments can see the thread. But you both no longer can. So say someone comes along and responds to you on that thread. Or to the other person on that thread? Will their comment go through? Will you be able to see their comment? Will you be able to reply to their comment?

It becomes more complicated and further can affect users not related to or involve with the block depending on how it’s handled and for the most part that’s problematic.

I think we should be differentiating a “block function” (and neither the twain shall meet) from a “mute function” (a one way filter).

I feel like this might genuinely just be better than giving people a false understanding of what the filter they are using does.

This is what I do when I want to search Lemmy. I put Lemmy: “search for this” into the search box and see what comes up. It works better than Lemmy’s internal search function a lot of the time.