In a bid to reduce harassment, Tumblr has renamed and updated its “Ignore” feature with what the company describes as “a proper, muscular” “Block” option designed to work even on anonymous users.
To block an offending user, select their avatar from your dashboard and click the human icon from the menu on the right. To block someone straight from your inbox, just find Block on the drop-down menu (or the ‘X’ if you’re on your phone); you can also ban the offending user straight from your settings page.
Engadget explains that blocked users should be unable to Like or reblog your posts; their Asks will not appear in your inbox unless the user is unblocked.
If Twitter’s harassment problem has taught us anything, it’s that there’s no one-step fix for curbing harassment on social platforms; that being said, it’s heartening to see Tumblr following the suit of other sites and doing more than just ‘ignoring’ Internet jerks.
What do you think of the new feature?
UPDATE: TMS commenter PixelScientist has shared a link to a test of the Block feature that clearly details how the update works (and what some of its shortcomings may be).
(via deray mckesson on Twitter, image via Shutterstock)
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