(1/3) Hello! I was wondering if xkit blacklist is gonna be retired bc of the new native tumblr text filtering & blocking features? It's good that tumblr is implementing those, but there's nuances to xkit blacklist that I like & that have social functions. Most of my blacklist is usernames, so eg afaik blocking is now like twitter blocking where posts from someone you've blocked disappear entirely, this would mean I can't see if eg someone I just followed keeps rbing posts by bigots -
(2/3) while blacklist warns me of their presence instead. Or eg if I have someone blocked, I can't read posts where they're vital to understanding the discourse/are being dunked on. Also I blacklist popular users bc I'm sick of seeing their posts, but I don't want to block them. I also like that xkit blacklist has username, text, & tag filtering in 1 system, rather than 3 separate ones, & that it's more forgiving of bad tagging practices (so, more discrete, you don't have to ask people to fix
their tags for you). I deal poorly with change or uncertainty (which is why I'm writing this), but if blacklist is retired, I guess I'll try to deal with the new social & practical reality- so I don't mean this as like, an inflexible demand. Thanks for reading, & thanks if you chose to answer me! (3/3)
XKit Blacklist is not going to be retired, but it’s probably going to be lower-priority going forwards. We’ve almost got it ready for the new dashboard! However, we will be encouraging users to switch to the native tools.
As someone whose blacklist also was almost entirely usernames, these concerns resonate with me, and I’d like to shed some light on everything brought up here! (Note: this information is only accurate to the new dashboard.)
Blocking a user doesn’t entirely hide their posts. It hides their posts that are directly on your dashboard; you’ll still see those posts when visiting their blog, even on the dashboard sidebar view (”peepr”). Since checking out a blog will show you all posts, including by users that you have blocked, you should be able to spot (or search for) any users whose buddies and fans you want to avoid.
Also, blocking a user only hides their original posts - you’ll still see posts on your dashboard that have comments by blocked users on them.
This brings us to the significance of Tumblr content filtering. Content filtering checks posts, including usernames in the reblog trail, meaning you can use it to filter out users you don’t want to block, or frequently have their comments make their way to your dashboard.
However, we are aware that Tumblr content filtering doesn’t check tags at all. I don’t think that’s good, and I encourage you to make a fuss about it to Tumblr support. I would too, but it’s hard for me to make a compelling case, since the combination of tag filtering and user blocking is doing just fine for me.
I’d also like to point out that Tumblr tag filtering does have an advantage over Blacklist in that it also checks the tags of the original post. Since most blogs tag their original posts to increase their discoverability, you might find that tag filtering is more effective than Blacklist for commonly tagged subjects.
Also, blocking a blog is usually a lot more useful than simply blacklisting or filtering its username: first, it tracks that blog across username changes, something you can’t do by just checking usernames - and secondly, means no nasty surprises with them showing up in your activity feed or follower list.
Overall, I encourage everyone to try out the native Tumblr tools, so that if they aren’t enough, you can tell Tumblr support exactly how they need to be improved.
Personally, I’m very happy with user blocking especially - it’s definitely worth going through your blacklisted usernames and making sure you have each blog actually blocked. Once you’re down to just actual subjects or phrases, you might find that you don’t see an overlap between what you need to put in your tag filtering and content filtering lists!
