Block Party - Bye-bye, Twitter trolls 👋

👩🏻‍💻 Hi everyone! I’m Tracy Chou, the founder and CEO of Block Party. As a software engineer from Silicon Valley and a diversity activist in tech, I am no stranger to the misogyny, racism, and other forms of hate that are rampant online. Nor am I stranger to how online abuse often transforms into real life threats including physical stalking and death threats. ✊ Sadly, I’m not alone. This issue disproportionately affects women, non-white people and other marginalized communities, and its damage is evident across society. We’ve seen this in recent events with politicians, journalists, healthcare experts, doctors, climate activists and more getting bullied online. Yet, there are very few solutions being built to cater to this issue -- platforms do a subpar job moderating hate and other “solutions” neglect to put the user first. 🚀 That’s why I founded and launched Block Party with a mission to create a safer online experience that’s in your control. We build anti-harassment tools against online abuse, starting with tools for Twitter. 🎁 We’ve been in closed beta for the past year and are now opening up sign ups for everyone! There’s a small “anti-troll toll” (yes, we recognize the irony of dealing with harassment as an anti-harassment company), you can ask a friend for an invite, or you can use this special invite for Product Hunt members for the next 24 hours. http://blockpartyapp.com/signup/... 👹 Read more about the “anti-troll toll” on our Substack. https://blog.blockpartyapp.com/p... 🤳 How it works with Twitter It’s super simple and easy to get started! 1️⃣ Sign up for Block Party with your Twitter account. 2️⃣ Set filters to determine who you want to hear from on Twitter. 3️⃣ Keep scrolling Twitter per usual (minus the Twitter trolls). 4️⃣ Check your Lockout Folder on Block Party for content that’s been filtered out if you’d like to review or have friends help. 📝 Are you experiencing harassment on Twitter or know somebody who is? Sign up for Block Party today. https://www.blockpartyapp.com/si... 👋 We can’t wait to hear what you think and to iterate our product according to your needs. Comment below with your thoughts and questions, and we’ll do our best to respond asap! 📣 Find us on Twitter @blockpartyapp_!

Through my work with BetterBrave and Hate Is A Virus, I have come to see time and time again the devastating impacts of cyberbullying and harassment both offline and online. And even more so how frustratingly these behaviors tend to target marginalized communities. Thank you, @triketora for creating this solution. So, so grateful that a service like Block Party exists!

No one judges how successful law and order is, by how frictionless dialling 911 is, yet for big tech social media companies, reporting is considered the answer to any moderation issue a user is experiencing. I’ve worked in community and moderation for over a decade now and it is clear that the current solutions aren’t successful in addressing the negative experience many marginalised groups are receiving. The more popular you are in these groups the more you’re expected to have to deal with the hate. Have a big problem, then you should expect to spend a lot of time dealing with it. Block Party empowers people to take back control of their own experience. There is a growing hunger for a product like this. The benefits spread far beyond the sum of blocking individual negative experience, because people are just going to be happier and want to be on these sites a lot more, as they won’t be eroded by the hate.

Congrats on the launch @triketora and team! Block Party definitely seems much needed on Twitter. Is BlockParty planning to expand to other platforms in the future/are any other platforms requested often by BlockParty users?

Block Party is more relevant than ever! It empowers you to take back control and have the Twitter experience you want to have. The team is fantastic! Go Tracy.

I am using Block Party since half a year now and can only recommend it. It's most useful during waves of unwanted attention. Especially the option to let others go through the mentions and decide which ones to unmute, keep muted or block. That process is exhausting if you have to do it on your own. But doing it for someone else is easier because of the distance by not being directly affected and reducing the load on each individual. While not under attack it helps with reducing spam and accidental mentions. I have a poplar first name as a username and keep a few mentions every week because of that. Thanks to Block Party I don't see them until I go through the Lockout folder once a week. That improves my Twitter experience.

What a joke. If you don’t like something don’t look at it. Simple as that.

So cool to see Block Party on PH today! I spend a lot of time on Twitter calling out the status quo and have never been satisfied with the muting features built into the site. I've been using Block Party for almost a year and my fave feature are the daily reminders of what's been added to my lockout folder. It's so nice to no longer have apprehension when checking my notifications. Just can't wait for it to support Instagram, too (any timeline for that, @triketora ?)

Take control of your twitter experience w Block Party

Wow this might be the most important thing I’ve seen launch in a while. I’ve seen so many good people driven out of online communities due to harassment and the people driven out are often the most important voices to have in the room. Block Party gives me hope we can give people tools to protect themselves online. Hopefully, social networks also see this as a step in the direction of identifying the people consistently causing people to feel unsafe so that we can systematically root them out and protect our online communities.

Congrats @triketora! Thanks for making it available for PH users. Just installed it! Will this also help with trolling DMs if I leave my DMs open?

Very relevant in this social media age! Love it.

VERY cool. The onboard seemed heavy. I had to sign up, confirm email, then set up double auth with SMS, THEN connect Twitter. Seems Twitter OAuth then SMS would have been way faster and sufficient. Really, that sounds like a big complaint but actually minor. The sign-up was at least intuitive. I think the product is amazing! Good job!

This is super cool. Also the sign-up process and onboarding is SUPER SIMPLE, love it. The "no profile pics" trolls BE GONE. Congrats on the launch @triketora!

This feels like the beginning of not only taking control over your Twitter and social media experience, but your internet experience. So needed in today's landscape of trolling and harassment online. Excited for this @triketora !!

block trolls on twitter? what is this black magic? 🙂 JK this is great and so very needed. Congrats on the launch!

so much at stake online - love this product for tackling cyber bullying.

Love what block party is building! I’m going to try it out soon and will report back!

I'm lucky in that i'm not inundated by trolls and abuse all the time on twitter. But from time to time I do get tweets and replies that make my stomach drop and my heart race a bit. I've been using BlockParty for a while now. I like being able to address these unpleasant tweets when I'm ready to, rather than getting a process interrupt in the middle of my day thanks to some rando.

@triketora Love this concept and product! Does it only work on the Twitter web app, or also on Tweetdeck and other list/organization platforms?