Isn’t everyone’s favorite feature of social networks the delightful experience of harassment? Obviously not, but that might be the new reality for folks on X, formerly known as Twitter.
X Corp. owner Elon Musk posted on Friday that the social media platform plans to remove the block feature, except for DMs, noting that the ability to block users “makes no sense.” Blocking effectively lets a user restrict other accounts from contacting or following them, which can help mitigate ongoing instances of online harassment and spam.
Musk didn’t provide a precise timeline for the update, though an insider at the company told Fortune that Musk has long planned to implement this change but currently lacks a polished plan to carry it out.
“It’s not happening anytime soon, unless he suddenly decides it’s something he wants <em>now</em>. But I doubt it since we have no clue what that looks like,” the X staffer said. Musk’s main objection, the person said, is that blocking a particular user from following you and seeing your tweets isn’t very effective, since the person can simply create an anonymous account to view your tweets.
Still, the plan seems certain to provoke outcry if Musk follows through (something that is hardly assured when it comes to the outspoken Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX). Many users rely on the blocking function to filter out targeted harassment campaigns in which trolls send a barrage of tweets with an individual’s Twitter handle in the message.
Among the X users who rely on the blocking feature are journalists like Taylor Lorenz and Ben Collins, who have been subjected to severe harassment campaigns owing to their reporting, and even venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, whose firm invested $400 million in Musk’s Twitter acquisition last year.
“It runs completely counter to user choice, which was a fundamental part of the strategy and product approach previously. Users should get to decide who and what content they want to engage with,” a former X executive told Fortune. “Taking this approach either means that the features are being gamed to a significant degree and the company can’t get control of it, or it is a means of ensuring that the narrative you want to spread is spread irrespective of user settings, and the users you want to be harassed are unable to hide from that harassment.”
Another challenge Musk might encounter if he removes the block feature is the risk of running afoul of Apple’s app store guidelines, which mandate that social networks offer “the ability to block abusive users from the service.” It’s unclear however whether this refers to app developers having the ability to ban users from a platform or if it means an app must give users access to a block feature.
While the Twitter platform has long suffered from user harassment, there are signs that incidents have increased since Musk, who describes himself as a “free speech absolutist,” acquired the company for $44 billion in November 2022. Before Musk’s ownership, instances of slurs targeting Black Americans were recorded at 1,282 times daily. After his takeover, this figure increased to 3,876 times per day, the New York Times reported.
Musk’s comments about removing the blocking feature comes just one month after a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit organization tracking online hate speech, revealed a substantial uptick in hate speech and violent content on Twitter. Musk has since sued the nonprofit, alleging that it inaccurately portrayed the social media platform as “overwhelmed with harmful content,” and arguing that 99.99% of tweet impressions consist of healthy content. He claims that the organization is illicitly “scraping” data from its servers and selectively highlighting objectionable posts as part of what he terms “a scare campaign to drive away advertisers,” Bloomberg reported.
Notably, Musk has witnessed the departure of two heads of trust and safety, a pivotal role responsible for managing objectionable content, since taking over: Yoel Roth, who was forced to flee his home owing to Musk’s implied support of a tweet containing unfounded accusations linking Roth to pedophilia sympathy, and Ella Irwin, who departed shortly after Musk’s criticism over the company’s decision to moderate the transphobic What Is a Woman? documentary for violating its rules.
