Both follow directions to resume working automatically.

1. Both follow directions to resume working automatically.

Rational: Blocking might have be done for "temporary pausing", accidentally, or whatever. Having to reset the following relationship mode would be seem counter-intuitive.

You know my answer: I expect that blocking doesn't change the relationship, thus unblocking restores the state and you haven't got to do anything manually (like asking the other side to follow you again since you accidentally hit the "block" button or so).

--1-- I guess

@Hypolite Petovan #1, especially since requiring manual re-follow on either side will create confusion. Users will not understand this requirement, so an info dialog would have to be shown and we all know how happy users are to reading such dialogs.

I'm for #1 :
If I have "action" and "unaction", I expect "unaction" to get me back to the status i was before "action": "mute/unmute", "follow/unfollow" "block/unblock", "delete/undelete"...

Thank you all for your input, I personally am agreeing with @hoergen based on the behavior on other social media platforms I've been using (Twitter, Facebook) where blocking cuts all ties, but it seems Friendica users have different expectations. This discrepancy is an issue because by design we expect people from other social media platforms to move to Friendica.

Technically, all the cases are easy to implement, but we will need to explain this discrepancy in the interface and even with a well thought-out pop-up confirmation message, I'm not sure it will be enough to clear all the confusion, especially from people using apps based on the Mastodon API where the expectation is 4.

Forcing someone to unfollow me is a critical feature even if I don't use it much-

This is especially true for accounts with approval where you may just not want someone to see your private posts anymore

It's not just wrong it's noticably broken to do anything but terminate everything

So it seems we are gravitating towards a hybrid solution:
- Friendica frontend will offer the possibility to manually revoke a follow.
- Friendica frontend blocking will not sever the current existing follow relationships.
- Mastodon API endpoint blocking will sever the current existing follow relationships to match Mastodon's behavior.

Number 1

I understand that as a Friendica user of 10 years I am in a small minority vs the many current and, hopefully, future users this software attracts, so I can understand that some older behaviors may (have to) change. I suspect that while I and users above do have a certain expectation on the behavior, there may not necessarily be a way to solve this that accommodates both (valid) view points.

I don't know if you have already considered the option to offer two different options to the users, "blocking" (which can be undone) and "block and permanently end relationship"? I'd imagine the argument against it is that it is confusing and/or causes technical complexity (requiring a new type of connection between user and the blocked account to be stored, which also requires a UI to manage these separately from contacts, etc.)

Thank you for your comment. On the technical side, it's trivial to implement either behavior. We are inching towards a two-buttons solution where one button will be used to block a contact, and another will be used to independently revoke a follow for compatible protocols (only ActivityPub so far).