Reddit introduces block button to help users fight harassment on the site

The new tool was announced by Reddit co-founder Christopher Slowe

Co-Founder and Executive Chair of Reddit Alexis Ohanian speaks at TechCrunch Disrupt 2015 (Noam Galai/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

Reddit, the social news site which calls itself 'the front page of the internet', has introduced a block button to help users combat abuse.

Blocking is a common feature on most social media sites, but it's never been a part of Reddit's sparse user interface.

Announcing the development on the site, Reddit co-founder Christopher Slowe said Reddit's values and expansive range of forums has created "great communities and deep meaningful discussions."

"But, sometimes this very openness can lead to less awesome stuff like spam, trolling and worse, harassment," he continued.

He said Reddit "works hard" to fight these things when they occur out in the open, but said the block tool will make it easier for users to deal with problems themselves.

To access the feature, Reddit users can go to their inbox to see a list of all their private messages and replies to their comments.

Simply clicking the 'block user' button under the comments will completely hide all of their comments, posts and messages. Users also won't be notified when a blocked user messages them.

Importantly, blocked users won't know that they've been blocked, theoretically making them less likely to create a new account and start trolling again.

However, there are some limitations - users can only block people who have interacted with them directly, so if someone's being particularly annoying in your favourite subreddit, you'll just have to grin and bear it until they reply to you.

Reddit's bosses have typically taken a laissez-faire approach to controlling content on the site, essentially just providing the platform and letting the users manage the community by voting on posts and appointing volunteer moderators.

There's lots of great parts of Reddit, but there's also some not-so-great parts. Steve Huffman, another Reddit co-founder, instituted some content rules when he became CEO in July 2015, after a period of chaos on the site over censorship. However, abuse still remains a problem in some communities.

The block tool is still in its early stages, and could be implemented more widely in future. It'll be interesting to see how it changes the way members of the community interact with each other.