Right now if I block a user, it can disconnect my user within the app from portions of my user presence.

i.e. if I respond to a user in good faith, they respond in bad faith, I block them, and I want to revisit my good faith response in context, I am unable to do so via my profile. If the person I block is the top level comment, I am unable to view any content created within that comment tree because the top level comment is blocked.

I bring this up as Lemmy.world defederates from hexbear, and it has felt like there might be some brigading going on in relation to that.

This might be intentional, or not. Just voicing an opinion that I wish blocking a user would just make all of that users posts show as [blocked] and their username show as [blocked], with an option to temporarily display the blocked content, but still be unable to interact without physically unblocking them. If the “block” was more cosmetic and less functional, it wouldn’t disconnect existing functionality (like trying to view my own posts in context).