I see the "AO3 should have a block option" petition going around and I'm a bit torn about it so lemme think out loud? On one hand: harassment and bullying must be stopped, and the current system (manually deleting mean comments) is not the happiest solution for sure /cont

However, blocking in fandom has a bad history. It's the biggest weapon of misapplied cancel culture. You do one thing somebody doesn't like and it can have an everybody-go-block-XY ripple effect. Block everybody from this ship, this event, this NOTP.

I'm blocked by people I never talked to. *I* blocked people I never talked to. It's part of twitter culture. Block first, ask questions... never.

And I don't think this culture would work well for AO3 - a website whose foundation was a stand against censorship/mass deletion.

....AND ONE MORE THING like. My alarm bells are already ringing a little with the recent-ish trend of Unasked For Constructive Criticism, because I come from a fanfic culture like that (Hungarian readers don't write comments, they write reviews) and it destroys you.

I think that if you throw blocking in the mix now... it would solve the problem of that trend, but at what cost. Just imagine making it through a 10k fic and you're excited to tell the author how much you adored it and find out you're blocked.