I realize Lemmy already has user blocking, so this might seem redundant. But, hear me out:

Problems with Lemmy's blocking:

• If you are a mod, blocking a user will hide their submissions even in the community/communities you're moderating. You'll still see their content if its reported, but you can't be proactive. e.g. Sometimes you'd like to block someone, but it's not warranted to ban them from your community(s), and you don't want to rely only on reports or see their shit elsewhere. So you just kinda grit your teeth and deal with it.

• As a regular user, blocking someone will hide their comments AND any replies to those comments. You'll often miss out on quite a bit.

Proposal: Soft block (or, more aptly "Filter User")

Instead of blocking at the API level, it will simply filter out the users in the UI.

I've greatly enhanced the keyword and other filtering components in the current dev branch which is what prompted this idea. With the revised implementation, comments can be hidden based on your filter preferences without hiding the rest of the comment chain. Also, both posts and comments that are filtered can be clicked to reveal the content if you want to see it.

Those filters are automatically disabled in the communities you moderate (or if the community is local and you're an instance admin). That prevents blind spots while allowing you to keep your sanity and not be exposed to certain things/topics/people more often than necessary.

This wouldn't replace the "hard" block from the API; it would be a separate action. I may call it "Filter User" to further differentiate it.

So, thoughts? Would this be useful to anyone? Or do other apps already have something similar to this?