I have to chime in here, because I’ve seen how this has affected our own very-diverse Discourse forum.
forced double-blocking is a terrible, terrible idea and is imposing the will of the forum on the vulnerable individual you are trying to protect. you are, in essence, saying “I understand that you feel unsafe and uncomfortable with this user, but we can’t just allow you to hide their posts - we’re going to make the fact that you’ve done this discoverable so now that user may have another reason to blow up and go after you”.
It took a concerted effort on the part of a lot of Twitter members who identify publicly as female to get Twitter to understand why this was a terrible, terrible idea and to allow for their “mute” capability - to remove a user from your views and timeline without alerting them to the fact that you’ve done so.
This is true in the real world, where the very act of getting a protective order against a stalker may result in violence, as stalkers are more likely to violate the orders once granted.
For this reason alone, if this is a feature in Discourse at all, it needs be be chosen by the requestor, not the will of the moderator or the site.
I would say that if a user requests that someone be blocked, and the site informs the user that they have been blocked by user X without consent, and the blocked user escalates, that’s a real case for liability from the site’s perspective as well, but more than that, it will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on people using the block feature at all (which I’ve seen from personal experience), and also transfers power to the aggressor - “You can’t block me because I’ll know!”.
I have to unequivocally agree here. This should either never be a feature of Discourse or it has to be requestor-opt-in only and be made clear what the very real risks are for escalation here.
Many folks get really, really upset when they have a post deleted, feel “censored” or “cancelled”, or have a power dynamic forced upon them they don’t like. But make no mistake, call it what you will but moderation is censorship, and it carries with it an inherent requirement to keep your members safe from retaliation as a result - the same reason moderation requests need to remain anonymous, as well.