An early feature (and the vocabulary word for it) that let Usenet users automatically hide posts from specific people or on specific topics — the direct ancestor of modern "block" and "mute" functions.
REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
"I put him in my killfile years ago, haven't seen a single post since."
LORE & ORIGIN
Introduced in early Usenet newsreaders like "rn" around the mid-1980s, the killfile was a configuration file listing authors, subjects, or keywords whose posts should be automatically filtered out of a user's view — giving individual users personal moderation power decades before platform-level block/mute buttons existed. The term survives as a piece of internet-history vocabulary explaining where the entire concept of blocking someone actually originated.
EQUIVALENT CONCEPTS IN OTHER LANGUAGES
MENTIONS OVER TIME
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