Key Takeaways
- Blocking a user will no longer prevent them from seeing your posts
- Users can still read posts but can’t interact when blocked
- It’s still possible to make X accounts private
There’s nothing more satisfying than tapping the block button on X ( formerly Twitter), knowing that when the troll who has been pestering you tries to read your posts, they’ll just find a message telling them that they’ve been blocked.
Well, that simple pleasure will soon be gone. Elon Musk has confirmed that the block feature is being changed, meaning that even if you block a user, they’ll still be able to read all of your public posts. Blocking them will stop them from being able to interact with your posts, such as adding replies, but they’ll still be able to read anything that you post, on a phone or on desktop.
The change has been a long time coming, with Musk having never been a fan of the block feature. The justification for making the change doesn’t quite add up, however. Here’s what you need to know about the new block feature on X.
Blocking users will no longer stop them from seeing your posts
Blocked users still won’t be able to interact with them
Kelly Sikkema/Unsplash
In response to a post on X breaking the news that the social media platform was about to remove the current block feature, Elon Musk posted that it was high time that this happened. He went on to confirm that the new version of the block feature will block accounts from engaging with the blocker’s posts but won’t stop them from seeing any public posts from that user.
In its current form, when you block someone, that account can no longer see any of your public posts. If they try to view your posts, they see a message informing them that they have been blocked. With the new version of the feature, even if you block an account, they will still be able to read all of your public posts, just like any unblocked accounts can. The only thing that will change when you block someone is that they won’t be able to reply to your posts or interact with them in any other way.
It’s still possible to set your posts to private, which lets you approve any new followers, ensuring that only the people you choose get to see any of your posts. However, if your account is public, there will no longer be a way to stop specific accounts from seeing your posts.
The plan to remove the block feature has been around for over a year
Elon Musk has been wanting to get rid of it for a while
Shutter Speed on Unsplash
The changes to the block feature aren’t really a huge surprise; it’s more of a surprise that it’s taken this long to happen. Elon Musk has been vocal about his dislike for the block feature; in August last year, he tweeted that block was going to be deleted as a feature, other than for DMs.
The responses to that post make for interesting reading, with the vast majority of people in the replies stating that they think removing the block feature would be a really bad idea, and that it would lead to more harassment and stop people from blocking scammers and bots. In fact, about an hour after the post, rival social media BlueSky went down. Coincidence?
Despite almost every reply indicating that they hated the idea of removing the ability to block accounts, however, it appears that the feature is finally going to be removed in its current form.
It’s claimed that the move is because blocked users can already see public posts
The justification doesn’t quite add up
Julian Christ / Unsplash
The reasons behind the changes are a little bizarre, to say the least. According to The Verge, a source at X claimed that the change is being made because it’s already possible to view posts from blocked users from another account or when logged out.
At least half of this isn’t strictly true. It’s no longer possible to browse X without being signed in to an account, a move that Musk made in order to stop rival AI companies from scraping X for content to train their AI models. If you’re logged out, you’re not going to be able to read posts from users who have blocked you, unless those posts appear in the results of search engines.
The reasoning seems to be that blocking isn’t 100% effective, so we may as well remove it completely. Which is a little like saying that, since airbags don’t save 100% of people, we may as well just get rid of them completely. And yet strangely, they’re still found in all Teslas.
The second part of the argument is that if a blocked account wants to read the posts of someone who has blocked them, all they need to do is create another account. This is completely true, but it’s a very strange argument. The reasoning seems to be that blocking isn’t 100% effective, so we may as well remove it completely. Which is a little like saying that, since airbags don’t save 100% of people, we may as well just get rid of them completely. And yet strangely, they’re still found in all Teslas.
It’s unclear why there will still be a block feature at all
The same arguments against the current feature apply to the new version
Here’s where the arguments for changing the block feature really fall down, however. The new block feature will still allow blocked users to read posts from the people that blocked them, but will stop them from interacting with those posts.
However, it would still be possible to interact with those posts by signing in to a different account, which is the exact justification being given for getting rid of blocking in the first place. You can’t justify removing one part of a feature because you can get around it by using a different account, and still leave another part of the feature that you can get around exactly the same way. It makes no sense at all.
What’s the real reason behind the removal of blocking?
It certainly doesn’t appear to be giving users choice
Julian Christ/Unsplash
If the justifications for changing the block feature are nonsense, then what’s the real reason that this feature is being changed? Well, the most obvious reason is that Elon doesn’t like it. He’s made this clear in the past, and despite almost everyone saying that they hated the idea, he’s pushed on with it anyway. I guess if you spend $40 billion buying a social media site, you feel like you have the right to ignore what people actually want in favor of your own personal preferences.
It may also be that this is part of the ongoing attempt to make X a site that is devoted to free speech, where anything that you want to say can be said. Blocking people doesn’t really stop you from saying what you want on X, but it does stop other people from reading it. Maybe X’s idea of free speech is that everyone has the right to say what they want, but also that everyone has the right to read it, too. It seems like the one thing that will no longer be available is the right to choose…
