Key takeaways
- Twitter is reportedly reworking its block button.
- The new system will still prevent users from interacting with public accounts that have blocked them, but will allow them to continue viewing their content.
- Twitter boss Elon Musk said, 'It's a great time. Social media reactions to this change have been polarized.
X, first called TwitterLooks like its block button is getting ready to work again. The old Twitter block function will reportedly be replaced with a much more limited feature.
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, the social media platform has undergone many sweeping changes. Besides restoring many permanently banned accounts, it also changed its cross-promotion policies and mounted efforts to better monetize its millions of users through the introduction of the Twitter Blue subscription service, among other offerings.
Elon Musk says it's 'high time' to rework Twitter's block function
This still ongoing wave of Musk's Twitter reforms appears to have set his sights on the platform's block feature. On September 23, app researcher Nima Owji reported that Twitter is on the verge of removing the current block button and replacing it with decisively more limited functionality. The new system will still allow users to block others, but will not prevent the blocked from viewing the content of the people who blocked them. Musk himself responded to OG's report by insisting it was “high time it happened,” thus confirming that a Twitter block button rework is indeed imminent.
Some Twitter users are unhappy with the block feature reworking
Social media reactions to this change seem quite polarized. Some Twitter users welcomed the rework as a way to streamline their app usage without affecting the main purpose of the old block button, which was to allow people to decide who can interact with them. Others have argued that the ability to prevent others from viewing one's posts is intrinsic to any block feature. “I don't want blocked creeps seeing my posts,” Twitter user philosophy_cat wrote in response to a recent hint at Musk's upcoming change.
Once this rework is implemented, the only way for Twitter users to control who can see their posts is to make their profiles private and then follow any accounts they want to keep in the loop. So it's not a particularly practical approach to employ popular, highly-followed users.
The change itself is still less drastic than what Musk claimed would take effect in August 2023, when he said That old block feature on Twitter will be “deleted” for all bar DMs. Some social media users opposed to this modification have argued that the only reason Twitter implemented it was to increase content impressions and engagement, thereby increasing its ad revenue.
