Get rid of blocking or change how it works
At the moment blocking is an all or nothing proposition.
Block someone and you cannot see their creations or profile and they cannot see yours.
With no warning and for no cause or explanation you can suddenly find yourself unable to see creations by random strangers. It can actually be a bullying tactic in itself, intended to intimidate, and groups of people can do it all at once to target an individual and bully them off the platform.
There are constant messages in Dreams about people blocking or being blocked and to be honest it creates a toxic environment.
I understand having the ability to block someone from sending you vile sexual messages or hate, is important, and that should definitely be retained. Blocking people from commenting on your creations would be enough for this, you do not need to block them from seeing your profile and creations completely.
There is no appeal process, so there is nothing to be done when someone blocks you. Now for most people they will probably be nonplussed by not seeing some content, especially by people that have expressed hatred for them. However when the same people who are being promoted by Mm, and run community competitions and make popular game kits block you, without any reason and refuse to respond to requests for explanation it becomes a bigger problem - especially for content curators and YouTube channel owners like myself.
Couldn't blocking just be from your end? So if you block someone you cannot see them - cannot see their comments cannot see their creations - so you are protected from hate messages etc.
Otherwise all blocking does is punish and bully people. It is being used vindictively for non valid reasons to punish or ostracise people. As it stands it is an abhorrent part of Dreams that creates drama and ill feeling, and should be looked at.
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As I understand it, blocking isn't a Dreams thing, but a PSN thing. When you block someone from in Dreams, you're actually blocking them from PSN entirely. So it could be from Sony's side regarding what blocking does for all online games and services.
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Blocking is a necessary feature, but certain aspects of its functionality in Dreams are problematic.
From experience: If someone posts comments on your profile and then blocks you, the comments remain and cannot be replied to (or deleted) so they can say “you stink like cabbage” and all their followers see that and and spam you with cabbage hate. Also when a player has blocked you, they can still tag you - so they can say anything they want on their own profile with a link to yours, and because you’re blocked you can’t see or report it. But people will keep seeing that comment and lining to your profile and the bullying goes on an on. I have an alternate profile, so I ended up using that to see and then report the comments this person had made about my main profile. Of course I blocked the person, but that doesn’t remove old comments. Blocking needs to also remove that person’s comments in order to stop harassment.
And as mentioned in another topic, if you add a creation to your Play Later queue and the author blocks you, it’s impossible to remove that creation from your queue.
I can definitely see the need to block players from seeing creations/profile, not just prevent posting of comments. If someone is harassing you in game, they may very well do so on social media as well. Access to view your creations means that can also record and share your content. I know of a couple creators who had blocked people because they didn’t want their work shown in specific live streams - it’d be nicer just asking not to be shown, and having that respected, but it that doesn’t always work out.
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I have never had anyone respectfully request I do not show their creations on YouTube. And to be clear all clips shown on my channel are done in a positive way, I do not negatively critique Dreams - I am more about promotion and encouragement for Dreamers to play so there would be no reason to request such a thing. However I would have understood certain musicians, for example, not wanting their music played outside of the Dreams platform. If they had written that into their descriptions I would have absolutely respected that - they did not need to block me from their portfolios in their entirety. I have seen such messages where musicians have put their Dreams work on Spotify which excludes them from being included in my YouTube videos - I totally have no issue with that - but I can still include them in Dreams collections, charts and playlists within Dreams itself.
However, I feel that the majority of blockings (not related to me at all) are about petty squabbles within the Generation Z part of Dreams. Blocking people becomes a drama that they all rally round and take sides on. Unfortunately they post Dreams content with text gadgets talking about it. It is very tiresome, and is the source of a lot of destructive conversation that can be damaging to young people's mental health and extends to cyberbullying that goes beyond name calling and actually borders on defamation, slander and libel.
Blocking does not act as a defensive strategy for the bullied, but an aggressive tactic by the bully and his friends. And it can come out of the blue. -
Once the bullies block you they can talk about you behind your back. This is quite possible one of the reasons why they do it. The person being bullied no longer sees the vitriol until someone who is not blocked lets them know about it. So blocking has no affect on bullies at all. If they want to record your creations and slander you all over the internet a blocking is not going to stop them - as has been pointed out alt accounts can be used.
It is by far one of the worst things in Dreams because it actually aids the bully and gives him control over his victim. If they can gather support it can literally bully someone off Dreams, and because you are blocked you cannot report them.
As a process to help people feel safe in Dreams it is shockingly poor, and I think we would all benefit if it could be looked into, and a better way of handling offensive content, bullying, the rights of creators over where their work is seen is found rather than this sledgehammer of a blocking process. -
I'm not sure if blocking is implemented in a way that would give a bad outcome to the following - investigating it would require an experiment with three user accounts:
- Alice publishes an element.
- Bob publishes a scene containing Alice's element.
- Alice blocks Charlie.
- Charlie tries to play Bob's scene.
but if the outcome of that is that Charlie is blocked from playing Bob's scene, then of all the decisions about how blocking works, that's the one that needs to be reversed the most, because when Bob published his scene, Dreams didn't ask Bob for consent to Alice having a say in whether Charlie could play it.
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@TheBeardyMan
Dreams does not work like that. You are not blocked from viewing creations that contains elements made by someone who blocks you.
You only get blocked from seeing creations from a blocker, and creations made by someone collaborating with a blocker (though this seems inconsistent). You also cannot see the creations of people you block - but you have the option to unblock to see them.
Por favor, entrar para comentar.