New safety options on user profiles

Muting and blocking are table stakes features on any community based platform these days. We haven't needed anything like this yet, partly due to the size of our community, and because we've been selective about who has access. These conditions will of course change as we open up the beta to more people, so it's time we added them now.

We hope to foster a good community that adheres to our Community Guidelines, but there may still be cases where you want to prevent someone else from interacting with you, or you may not want to see their work anymore. Muting and blocking will allow you to do just that.

The new block confirmation modal explains what happens when you block someone

While we value freedom of speech, that doesn't mean freedom of consequence. If we see an increased number of blocking or muting on your account, we will be proactive in investigating the reasons, and may give you a warning.

This isn't meant to be scary, but we are serious when we say we do not tolerate harassment or abuse, and we hope you feel the same way. We want Refrakt to be a safe and fun place to hang out and share your work.

What to do if you find issues

We say "we" but it's still just Sam working on Refrakt, and that includes moderation and fixing bugs. There may be some areas of Refrakt where muting or blocking doesn't get you the desired results. We kindly ask that you use the feedback form to let us know if you still see someones content that you have muted or blocked!

Improvements

• We've added a little notice banner at the top of Refrakt that we can use to inform you of important messages. We had some issues with our image provider that prevented files from being uploaded correctly, so we used this notice to share an update. Hopefully we don't have to use it very often, but it's handy to have!

• Your own posts are now excluded from the "Following" feeds. We think this improves the noise ratio when you want to narrow your feed a little. They still appear in the "Everyone" feed.

• We've improved the messaging on profiles, posts, and series when you cannot view certain content. This could be because you've muted the user, been blocked, or the user has been suspended etc.

• We've also made some small improvements to the wait list and sign up pages so they now link to each other a bit better.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where the unfollow button would stop working.

• Fixed a bug with permissions that prevented you from deleting your own posts.

• Fixed a few UI animations.