Users might soon be unable to block accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter. Elon Musk, who has owned the social media platform since last year, hinted that there is no reason to block other profiles when they can be muted. The latter is another feature of the app that allows users to remain followers with another person without seeing the content they post.
The billionare stated that “Block is going to be deleted as a “feature”, except for DMs” on his own X account. This means that users who were blocked in the past by an account will have the restriction lifted and will be able to see the profile of the person who blocked them. However, they will not have the ability to send them DMs (direct messages) to that same profile.
Funny, there are a lot of valid reasons posted, but these are not the reasons people most often actually use blocks. Most blocks are vapid. Said something annoying (block), liked a post I didn't like (block), won an argument in a single thread (block). Eclipses the valid reasons.
— EV Falcon ⚡️🚙𓅃 (@FalconFour) August 18, 2023
Following the announcement, a number of users questioned the logic behind this decision. They stated that the “mute” option is different from the “block” option. One one hand, blocking helps people restrict specific accounts from communicating with them, viewing their Tweets and following them.
On the other hand, muting just hides posts from the “silenced profile.” In addition, the silenced acount is not notified about the restriction and they can still see messages,activity and are able to comment and DM the person who muted them. Basically, these two features work in different ways for useres.
Still, It is not the first time that Elon Musk causes controversy over the choices he has made with X. Last month, he provoked some chaos when he suddenly introduced a limitation for viewing tweets on his platform. This time, the announcement of the deletion of the block feature brought concern to the online safety of people in the platform.
