- X has announced a major change to how blocking works.
- If a user is blocked they will still be able to reply in a post they are tagged or mentioned in.
- Users are understandably upset and confused about these changes.
Elon Musk doesn’t like the block function on X. Despite it being a valuable safety feature, the billionaire who ultimately decides who is and isn’t allowed on his platform, has said in the past that blocking “makes no sense.”
Ignoring the cries of users who lean on blocking for protection, X is now pushing forward with Musk’s request to remove blocking.
“If a user who has blocked you replies to one of your posts, you will now be able to see their reply. This change enables you to identify and report any potential bad content that you previously could not view, safeguarding both your account and the overall integrity of our platform,” the engineering team at X said in a post.
“These efforts are part of our ongoing commitment to aligning the block feature with our principles as a public town square. Our goal is to allow users to control their experience while maintaining the public visibility of posts,” the team added.
As you might imagine, this news has gone down about as well as a shot of lava.
Many have pointed out that if a user can still access and see posts, that’s not really a block. However, from what we can gather, this is only the case if the person is tagged or mentioned in a post and they won’t be able to see all content from the blocker.
This is just us giving X the benefit of the doubt as there isn’t any further explanation or documentation about this decision, it very well could be the case that a blocked user will be able to see all content, but we don’t know.
Unfortunately, Musk’s dream of removing the block feature may be folly. Both Google and Apple require apps that host user-generated content, to give users the ability to block others. If X removes the block feature, that may get it kicked from app stores and as much as he crows that X is the future, without app stores the “everything app” fades into obscurity.
We’re interested to see how this latest change impacts X but we’re sure it won’t be positive.
[Image – Bastian Riccardi on Unsplash]
