Last week, I noticed that a Facebook connection of mine had blocked me. When you block someone on Facebook this not only disconnects the friendship but it makes the person invisible to you, as if he or she doesn’t even exist on Facebook at all. The two parties involved cannot see each other’s comments on mutual friend’s photos, status updates or posts. Once a block is put up, there is no way for the two parties to see anything that the other does.
In my mind, blocking someone on Facebook is a very extreme move and it is a feature to use very sparingly. I am looking at my own privacy preferences on Facebook now and I see that I have 3 people blocked. 1 person was a networking contact and I have her blocked because of threatening comments that she made towards me in a political conversation. I had never met her in person and knew nothing about her other than the fact that we had some common interests. The other 2 people are men who sent me emails with inappropriate and suggestive content. I was neither Facebook friends with them nor did I have any friends in common with them. By blocking these men, they can no longer find me on Facebook.
I went to my Facebook settings to make sure that my privacy preferences were intact and that there was truly a disconnect with this person who blocked me. What I discovered was shocking and I believe it is a glitch that should be addressed by Facebook. I found out that I was able to untag myself in this person’s photos. I had the ability to remove my name from whichever pictures I wanted. However, since the person who blocked me “doesn’t exist” to me anymore on Facebook, I was unable to untag this person from MY photos. The relationship was severed by this person and yet this person still has access to my photos. This did not settle well with me.
At this point, I went to my personal Facebook page and put up a status update to ask my connections for their
opinions about photos with regards to blocking. I wrote:
“Did you guys know that if you block somebody on Facebook, Facebook automatically unfriends the 2 people involved. However, the parties remain tagged in each other’s photos. I think that if somebody decides to sever a connection & block another person, the 2 people involved should NOT have any access to the other person’s photos. Do you agree or disagree?”
I received many comments on this update and everybody agreed that if there is a disconnect, the photos should be disconnected, too. Here is a sample of the responses:
- “Would make break-ups and untagging photos a lot easier. Haha.”
- “Honestly, if it were me and I felt the need to block someone, I’d probably untag or remove any photos of them from my page anyway. I’ve done that before, but then again, I’m efficient like that.”
- “That does seem like a glitch. You would think if you were blocked it would automatically untag all photos.”
- “I’d definitely agree with you!”
- “Completely agree!”
What do you think about blocking? Have you ever been blocked by someone? Have you ever blocked someone else? Could you have been blocked and you haven’t realized it yet?
I have been examining the topic of blocking deeply and will be blogging about the issues that surround this action. There ARE other issues than just the photo tags. Stay tuned…
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