The Best Ways to Block Annoying People Online
Not a day goes by that I don’t see friends turn against each other, stupid relatives or people they knew, and the rest of us only get pleasure from social media. And it looks like the online squabbles each got worse, now that our (seemingly never ending) isolates have made us all a little short and fat – and allowed really dumb people to show their whole ass on the Internet as the phrase goes on.
Rather than wrestling with everyone you see online, or feeling a tiny pang of anxiety in your stomach when you see a friend post an incredibly ignorant comment online, I might suggest a different approach: start sanitizing your feeds. It’s easy to do, you can usually maintain a certain level of association with people without seeing all their thoughts, and it will make you much, much happier online.
Ready? Let’s start:
iOS
While I have no way to prevent people from adding you to annoying group text messages – that is, nor is there a way to remove myself from those sent south – you can at least swipe left on any text thread to hide warnings for those messages … It won’t stop you from seeing the annoying things people are saying if you go see this message, but at least your phone won’t be lit up with an overactive bunch of text messages.
Plus, you can always block people who bother you. This is a more extreme approach, but useful if someone’s comments drive you crazy.
Android
The second verse is the same as the first. You can’t leave group messages on Android, alas, but you can turn off any text threads that get out of hand – whether it’s between you and a group of people, or between you and one really annoying person. In the default Messages app on Android 11 (beta), tap on the conversation that annoys you, and then tap on the three-dot icon in the upper-right corner of your device. Tap Details and then tap Notifications to turn off notifications for that particular conversation.
And you can also use the “Block and report spam” option instead of clicking “Notifications” to do just that.
Earlier we talked about all the different ways to silence annoying people on Facebook . If you need to brush up on something, let’s go over the basics. When someone bothers you on Facebook, you can:
- Postpone Them : Click or tap the three dots icon in the upper-right corner of the person’s post and select “Postpone [post author] for 30 days.” I like to think of it as a big social media penalty.
- Unsubscribe: Open a person’s profile, tap the Friends icon (hidden under the three-dot icon on iOS and Android), and choose Subscribe or Unsubscribe, depending on whether you are on your phone or the desktop.
- Don’t let them see you when you’re online: Don’t let people click or tap on your name and hit you like you’re not there. In the (new) desktop version of Facebook, click the three-dot icon to the right of the word Contacts in the right sidebar and select Disable Active Status.
- Block them. Visit the person’s profile and click the three-dot icon next to the friends icon we mentioned earlier. Only this time, don’t fuss with any “subscription” options; block them completely so that you practically disappear from each other’s virtual life.
Is someone or something bothering you on Twitter? Click or tap the down arrow icon to the right of their name in the main ribbon. There you will see several options for how to silence annoying people:
- Muting them, which leaves them as “subscribers,” but removes them from your timeline.
- Giving up their subscriptions, slightly more radical approach, which essentially excludes them from your life on Twitter.
- Blocking them , which severs any connection between you and the other person and makes it impossible for them to view any of your Twitter messages while they are logged into their account.
Done? Not really. Twitter also hasan incredibly useful feature that you can use to mute any tweets in your timeline that contain certain words – useful if, say, you hate pop culture, all mentions of certain politicians, or anything related to the coronavirus. …
In addition, Twitter provides you with several advanced filters that you can use to automatically turn off notifications from other Twitter users for all kinds of different criteria:
If you don’t like a comment on Instagram, you’re kind of stuck. If it is something on an account that you do not control, there is nothing you can do. However, if it is on one of your photos or videos, you can remove it , flag it , or both that and another. Just like Twitter, you can have Instagram automatically hide comments if they contain words or phrases that you don’t like. You can even have Instagram pick these words directly based on any comments you (or others) have sent to the service.
You can block other Instagram users , but this will only delete their comments on your photos. If they commented on a photo from an account you both follow, you’ll see what they said. They won’t be able to send you direct messages, but it’s the same tall wall you can build between yourself and another person.
Youtube
Is there something bothering you on YouTube? You can report videos and comments using the vertical or horizontal three-dot icons on YouTube (both in the desktop interface and in mobile apps). You can also report users from their profile page using the checkbox icon on the desktop site, or block them by clicking the three-dot icon in the YouTube mobile apps and selecting Block User. This will prevent them from commenting on any videos you upload, but it will not make them invisible on the site or in the app.
You can remove another person’s comments from your videos by clicking or clicking the three-dot icon in said comment on YouTube’s desktop site or its mobile apps. However, if you are on a Web site, you can also completely hide a person from your channel; when you do, any of their comments will not be posted. If they’re really assholes, they can just sit back and vote on whatever you post, but hopefully it doesn’t come to that.