Users of X, formerly known as Twitter, will no longer be able to block comments from unwanted followers, according to a post by X owner Elon Musk on Friday, eliminating what’s long been viewed as a key safety feature. Blocking will only be available for direct messages, he said.
“Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” Musk wrote Friday. He was responding to a post from the account of Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, asking, “Is there ever a reason to block vs mute someone?” The group behind that account promotes the electric car company, where Musk is CEO.
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Users have been able to use the block function to make sure that hateful content and harassment doesn’t show up in their feed in response to their posts. The mute feature just keeps the individual user from seeing the undesired responses, but doesn’t eliminate them from others’ feeds.
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Louis Jones, a longtime media and advertising executive who now works at the Brand Safety Institute, said Musk’s latest plan is very concerning as users could be inundated with spam, threats and other harmful content.
What the fuck! So now Musk is eliminating the block button on X. I guess he thinks it’s a good idea to make it easier for trolls and harassers to target people. What a brilliant idea! I’m sure this will create a much more welcoming and inclusive environment for everyone on X.
If you haven’t already deleted your X account, you may be starting to consider doing it. Coincidentally, Barbara Krasnoff at The Verge wrote an article this week on how to delete your Twitter history. “You can easily delete individual posts. Removing your Twitter/X history is a little more complicated.”
Either way, if you’re now on X or were ever on Twitter, it’s a good idea to take precautions with your posting history since, even if you’ve moved on to one or more other social networks, it’s possible that somebody will unearth one of your old tweets and create a firestorm without you even being aware it’s happening. (And while it’s not necessarily bad to be able to ignore something like that, it’s probably a good idea to know when it’s erupting.)
So regardless of whether you’ve cut Twitter out of your life, the best protection you can provide yourself is the deletion of your Twitter history. Here’s where to start if you’re interested in nuking your timeline and keeping future tweets from falling into the internet’s vindictive void of posterity.
ldstephens 