Twitter owner Elon Musk surprised users of the social media platform on Friday by announcing plans to remove the ability to block other users—a decision that has so far not found many prominent supporters.
“Block will be removed as a ‘feature,’ except for DMs,” Musk said saidadding that he found the feature “absurd”.
The news comes in response to a tweet from the Telsa Owners Silicon Valley account requested if there is a reason to block someone instead of using the mute feature. When someone is blocked, they can’t read your tweets. When muted, they can still see your tweets, but their tweets won’t appear in your feed.
Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey added his support for removing the block feature in favor of letting users mute other accounts if desired. “Just mute,” replied Dorseyalong with the “100” emoji signaling approval.
However, Dorsey was in the minority. By and large, Twitter users rejected Musk’s plans — even users who have typically supported him in the past. Detractors believe that removing the feature will do harm to users who rely on it to keep abusive tweets from hitting their feeds.
“I like most of your other innovations here. But blocking allows people to protect themselves,” the author and psychology professor Geoffrey Miller tweeted, citing threats such as “stalker, psychopath, toxic troll, [and] cancel the culture of the ‘activist.’”
“This is an important feature to improve the security and quality of this platform,” added Miller. “Please reconsider!”
“Why do you insist on making the experience worse here every day?” user “Chief Birb Bernanke” requested. “Are you just harassing people to see how much they will take this time, or what? I blocked hundreds of accounts for harassment. What’s the point of deleting this?
Even Greg (@greg16676935420), a well-known anonymous Twitter user who frequently interacts with celebrities such as Musk and retired NFL star Tom Brady, responded in support of the feature. “I block my posts so scammers and bots can’t access them,” Greg tweeted.
“Cool, now we can face threats and abusive behavior and not to mention spam bots that are actually hurting the audience,” the crypto influencer Crypto Wendy O write.
The ability to block accounts is a standard feature on social media platforms that have been launched in recent years, including X rival Thread Meta, BlueSky, and decentralized Mind, and Mastodon.
“That was a big mistake. There are toxic people on this platform that users don’t want in their replies,” a Twitter user with an assumed name Wall Street Silver said. “Blocking is a critical peace of mind issue for many people as it generally keeps cyber stalkers on the move.”
Twitter did not immediately respond decrypt request for comment.
Musk has made a number of significant changes to the platform since acquiring it last fall. In July, Musk announced that Twitter was changing its branding and logo to an X, although many still refer to the platform by its former name and the message it calls “tweet”.
Tweetdeck, the advanced Twitter client, is also being made exclusive to Twitter Blue subscribers of the premium service—as is basic user verification. Some Twitter users believe the block feature will eventually go down the same route.
“I have received a vision of the future: Within a week of removing the block button, Elon will announce that the block feature will only be available to Twitter Blue subscribers,” Director of Cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation Eva Galperine write.
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