Elon Musk, the owner of popular micro-blogging platform X (previously called Twitter) has announced that the ability to block people on Twitter will be removed as a feature in the future, as he believes it “makes no sense.”
“Block is going to be deleted as a “feature”, except for DMs,” wrote Elon Musk on X. Musk’s statement came after a post questioned the purpose of blocking someone on X instead of just muting them.
Block is going to be deleted as a “feature”, except for DMs— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 18, 2023
Muting and blocking are distinct actions on X. Muting stops you from seeing content from certain users, while blocking stops others from seeing your content, following you, or interacting with you.
X owner also mentioned that in the future, muting will be the only method to control content on X, but blocking will remain for direct messages. Taking away blocking could let spam and harassers interact with those who would have blocked them, since muting is less strict.
When you mute an account, they can still follow you and interact with your content. You won’t see their replies unless others reply to them.
Musk recently said he will soon take action on shadow-banning accounts on his platform. Musk also apologised for the delay in implementing the changes to stop shadowbanning. Being shadowbanned means you’re blocked or muted from the social media platform without being notified.
“Sorry it’s taking so long. There are so many layers of ‘trust & safety’ software that it often takes us hours to figure out who, how and why an account was suspended or shadowbanned,” the tech billionaire posted.
After acquiring Twitter (now X) in October last year, Musk had tried to prove that shadowbanning was a common practice at the social network, by releasing information to the public at regular intervals.
Musk said that upcoming changes to Twitter’s platform would identify whether anyone had been “shadow-banned,” as well as what they could do to rectify that status.
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