Blocking somebody, and what they see
Safety · 3 min ·
Most of what arrives here is kind. This post is about the rest of it, and about the button that is deliberately small.
What blocking does
- They cannot send you a hug, and they will never be shown an ask of yours.
- You will never be shown one of theirs.
- Any match between the two of you ends.
- Any permission they had to see your albums ends with it.
- There is no route left by which they can write to you.
That last one is worth saying plainly. It is not that messages from them are filtered or held back. There is nowhere for such a message to be written, so there is nothing to be delivered.
What they see: nothing
The other person is not told. They are not sent a notice, they do not see a mark against their name, and there is no page anywhere that says you did this.
What they find is that a match has ended, which looks exactly like any match that somebody simply ended. The two are made deliberately indistinguishable, and that is a requirement rather than a nicety.
Telling somebody they have been blocked turns a quiet exit into a confrontation, and the confrontation is the exact thing a person blocking a stranger is trying to avoid. A remedy that announces itself is not much of a remedy.
You do not need a reason
There is no form, no categories, no box asking what happened, and no appeal offered to the other person. One tap and it is done.
It is also allowed to be about nothing at all. You do not have to have been wronged. Something felt off, or you would simply rather not, and both of those are complete reasons that you never have to say out loud.
Why the button is so small
It sits underneath a hug, in the smallest type on the card, and you have to be looking for it.
That is on purpose. A prominent block button on every message would frame every hug as a thing to be defended against, and would set the tone of the whole site to wariness. The overwhelming majority of what arrives is somebody being kind to a stranger for no reason, and the interface should say so.
Blocking is not the same as telling us
Blocking is for you. It closes the door and we do not need to be involved.
Reporting is for us, and it is what to do when somebody should not be here at all. Write to safety@freehug.me. You do not have to be signed in, and you do not have to be sure. We would much rather read a report that turns out to be nothing than have you sit on one that was not.
The one rule with no exceptions is that nobody here ever asks anybody for money, for any reason. If that happens, that is the moment to write to us rather than only to close the door.
The wider design
Blocking is the last line rather than the first. Contact from a stranger you never invited is not possible here at all, which is the subject of the two rules. Blocking exists for the person you did say yes to and would now rather not have.
And the limit that goes on every page here: this is not a helpline and nobody here is a professional anything. If something has frightened you badly, there are people who can help properly, and if it is a matter for the police then it is a matter for the police, and we would say so.
More
- When you are the one with something to giveGiving a hug asks nothing of you beyond a kind minute. How giving works here, why you will not find out whether it helped, and when not to send one.
- Nobody here ever asks you for moneyThe one absolute rule on freehug.me, why it is stated so flatly, what a request for money tends to look like, and how to tell us without signing in.
- Grief, and the company of strangersEverybody is kind for a fortnight and then the world resumes. Why grief gets harder to mention as it goes on, and what a stranger can offer that a friend cannot.
Not a helpline, and nobody here is a professional anything. If today is a serious one, there are people who can help properly.