To maintain privacy when using social media, you can take into account several tips. It doesn’t matter if you use Instagram, Facebook, X or any other. In all cases, you will always find some functions that will help you preserve privacy. In this article, we are going to talk about the differences between blocking and restricting. These are two options that you will have on many platforms, but they are not the same.
In both cases, what you may be looking for is privacy. You will be able to make it easier for others to access your personal data and track you on the Internet. However, depending on the circumstances, you may want to block a user or simply restrict access, either to one person or to everyone.
What is blocking on social networks?
When you decide to block a contact on social networks, such as Instagram, your profile will be completely hidden from that person. They will not be able to access the photos you upload, the messages you make public, they will not be able to send you private messages, see your contacts, etc.
Even the likes you give to another account will be hidden from the person you have blocked. For example, think of a photo that someone uploads and receives 20 likes, including yours. The contact you have blocked accesses that image, but would only see 19 likes, as yours would not appear.
Basically, blocking an account means that it disappears from any kind of interaction. They will not be able to contact you, nor will you appear on their platform in any way. We can say that it is something more decisive, more definitive. It usually happens when you have had some confrontation with some user on the Internet, for example.
What is restricting?
On the other hand, there is the option to restrict. This can be to a specific account or to several. For example, you could restrict all your photos to only a certain number of contacts and they can see what you upload, comment on posts, give likes… The same goes for who can see the information you put on your profile.
You may want to restrict access to certain content, for one person or a group of people. You don’t want to actually block them, so they could still send and receive messages and they wouldn’t be able to see that you’ve restricted them. But they wouldn’t be able to access certain information that you’ve restricted.
Also, their comments, photos, or whatever they post on their account might not appear to you. If you restrict someone, their updates won’t appear to you. Neither will what you post. However, this will be different depending on the social network, since not all of them have the same restriction functions.
In short, we can say that both blocking and restricting can help improve privacy on social networks. However, blocking is more comprehensive, more decisive when it comes to preventing someone from seeing anything you do on a platform, while restricting a user can simply be limiting what they can see from your account.
