Changelog: Block Tools For User Safety

As part of our ongoing commitment to community safety, we've rolled out the ability to block other community members. This is a tool designed to be used as a complement alongside the efforts of our community of moderators and existing anti-abuse systems. Our hope is that this feature doesn’t have to be used too often, but it is critical to provide tools which offer individuals immediate recourse against abuse and harassment.

So, what does blocking someone do?

Blocking someone means that:

• They will not appear in your feed
• You will not see their comments
• You will not receive any notifications on their activity
• They will not be able to comment on your posts
• They will not be able to message you through DEV Connect

We also have a mute feature coming in the future, which will only hide in-feed content but will not block comments, etc. So, if you are not seeking to wholly block a user, and just want to see less of their content, please wait for that mute feature.

As this is our first implementation of the feature, we're open to additional suggestions on how to continue improving it. We will be refining this functionality in coordination with the community. Please open an issue if you have any suggestions or encounter a bug.

On a personal note, I am glad to have had the opportunity to work on this feature. As a DEV core team member and participant of the community, most of my time with DEV has been working on support and anti-abuse. I think we've implemented some great features and practices in responding to abuse reports thus far. However, we can’t rest on our laurels; providing everyone with additional anti-abuse tools is an incredibly important step in ensuring that everyone feels safe here in the community as we grow. We have more safety features coming down the pipeline in active development.

Happy coding. ❤️