Elon Musk’s X is planning to make a change to how the block function works, breaking from the established standards of other social media apps. When the policies around blocking change, people who have been blocked by someone will still be able to see that person’s posts, so long as they’re public. They just won’t […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Elon Musk’s X is planning to make a change to how the block function works, breaking from the established standards of other social media apps. When the policies around blocking change, people who have been blocked by someone will still be able to see that person’s posts, so long as they’re public. They just won’t be able to like, repost, or reply to these posts.
“Blocking public posts makes no sense,” Musk said on X last year. “It needs to be deprecated in favor of a stronger form of mute.”
Jack Dorsey, a former co-founder and CEO of Twitter, agreed with this sentiment. In a sense, Dorsey and Musk do have a point. On most social media platforms, if someone blocks you, you can still find their public posts — you just have to log out of your own account. But Tracy Chou, founder of the anti-harassment tool Block Party, argues that this extra bit of friction matters.
Chou wrote on X, “i’m sure someone from twitter (elon) is arguing that block evasions were always possible from other accounts but the point is that friction matters!! making it easy for a creeper to creep is not a good thing!!”
Many X users agreed with Chou, generating increased interest in other platforms. Bluesky, a Twitter alternative, has added another 1.2 million users over the past two days, as users looked for an alternative to X. On the U.S. App Store’s top charts, Bluesky climbed to No. 2 in the Social Networking category, up from No. 181 the previous day.
These spurts of growth don’t always translate to long-term usage. But, as opposed to some other platform updates — like its name change from Twitter to X — this policy change isn’t just symbolic. It’s a move that prioritizes the experiences of people being blocked, rather than those doing the blocking, who are often more immediately at risk.
“Today, block can be used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked,” X’s engineering team wrote in a post. “Users will be able to see if such behavior occurs with this update, allowing for greater transparency.”
This stance can be alienating for users who are more concerned about their own safety than this cherry-picked scenario, in which they could be blocked by someone who then shares information about them.
Claire Waxman, who serves in the London Mayor’s Office as the appointed Victims’ Commissioner, is also concerned how the changes could impact victims of abuse.
“This is a dangerous decision for a social media platform, and will have serious implications for victims — especially those being stalked — and their safety,” Waxman wrote on X. “Enabling blocked users to see posts is catering to abusers and stalkers, indulging and facilitating their behaviors.”
Colten Meisner, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University who studies social media harassment, agrees.
“The block feature has been a first line of defense for people being harassed,” Meisner told TechCrunch. “It feels like there’s no other way to interpret this policy change but to say, ‘Victims of harassment, the first line of defense you’ve had, we’re now going to take away.’ Because if you want views, if you want visibility, that’s what it comes with on X.”
Meisner also sees a trend in how Musk’s personal beliefs and vendettas have been reflected in platform policy.
“[Musk] is definitely the archetype of the person that’s being blocked, and so it almost feels like a childish retaliation in some sense,” Meisner said. “Elon specifically has had this history of making policy changes basically at his own whims.”
For instance, X has suppressed links to its competitors, like Substack and Mastodon at various times. The platform also once singled out NPR with a “state-affiliated media” label, which is usually reserved for publications without editorial independence from their government (NPR receives less than 1% of its $300 million annual budget from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is federally funded).
On a platform that has already generated marked rises in hate speech, the changes to the block feature are a harbinger of the same trend continuing.
“This policy change is just a massive backstep in the history of harassment,” Meisner added.
Leave a Reply