Elon Musk Says Twitter Is Going To Get Rid Of The Block Feature, Enabling Greater Harassment

it's unavoidable to center Elon here but can we just take a step back and appreciate how stupid, bad, and completely antithetical to a usable website this idea is? blocking has been a feature on like everything since phpBB forums because it literally just works. it's an easy way to curate your experience without escalating and it's a logical imitation of being able to simply avoid a person in real life. the idea of removing this in favor of nothing but mutes is just goofy as fuck (and if you make muting the new "block", what's even the difference between them? people will just use them basically the same way!).

Fun fact: a block feature is required to be accepted by the Apple AppStore review process. So Twitter will disappear from Apple devices with this change.

Since this got some votes and became visible, here's the source:

Apps with user-generated content present particular challenges, ranging from intellectual property infringement to anonymous bullying. To prevent abuse, apps with user-generated content or social networking services must include:

- A method for filtering objectionable material from being posted to the app

- A mechanism to report offensive content and timely responses to concerns

- The ability to block abusive users from the service

- Published contact information so users can easily reach you

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#user-generated-content

So what you're saying is, if I have a Twitter account and I start blocking many MANY people it costs Elon money? Interesting.

Wow...

Is there some kind of tech CEO competition running or something?

"Who can alienate their user base the fastest"

Whats going on with social media CEOs making dumb decisions these days..

As a member of a rather vulnerable minority, I had made pretty liberal use of the block feature on Twitter. Of course, I left when Musk took over and switched to Mastodon, but my account's still there. I didn't delete it or anything. Might have to now.

Elongated Muskrat has discovered just how many accounts are blocking him. His ego can’t take that. His FrEeSpEeCh must be heard

So he's run out of engineers that know how to maintain the block feature?

Im honestly surprised twitter is still standing. Like how. How is it still going.

Let's be real, he's doing this because he's upset about people blocking Twitter blue accounts, this in no way increases server costs or any bull shit like that

Watching major social media websites actively kill themselves has been nothing if not an experience

I really hope platforms like Lemmy and Mastodon take off. Just the idea of no single person with control over how we all communicate and share ideas gives me hope for the future.

"Hang on, Steve. Reddit can not and will not beat Twitter." -Elon

"Hold my beer, Elon! I'm probably going to shutdown the mobile reddit website." -Steve

Damnit, I knew I shouldn't have blocked him. Sorry guys this is my fault, I only had him muted before.

Elon Musk is a gaping, farting anus. I pay as much attention to the sounds from a gaping, farting anus, as I do from him.

Hard pass. If I cannot block someone harassing me that's it. Thank God I already don't have the problem of using Twitter to begin with

Another great ideea from greatest Genius of our age! Of God how could we live without him until now! /s

Awww Musky’s feelings got hurt that so many people have blocked him on twitter lol

This has to be his worst decision at twitter so far.

I am very glad I left Twitter at the beginning of Musk's rein. This is just dangerous.

I wonder if this is because many people on Twitter just automatically block anyone with a blue checkmark (paid) when they see a response and the trolls have their feelings hurt so they run to Musk shouting about how they paid to be heard so he should force people to unblock them. That's the kind of childish argument I would expect.

Huh why ? This doesn't make sense

I’m not sure how many coffin nails that Elon may have left, but this is a big one.

By this time, I thought he was out of feet to shoot, but he keeps finding new ones. Or maybe he's already at the "shooting myself in the knee" phase.

This is cause people blocked him isnt it or was it simply Biden got more attention then the poor musky boi

This reads like the Onion headline

I smile every time when I see that Musky did some more stupid shit, because I know that every time he does shit like that, Mastodon grows more. And with that, the entire Fediverse gets stronger.

Go on Elon! Don't Stop please! Kill Twitter!

Twitter's fundamental model of user interaction is said to be broken, and lots of things have been made to mitigate it. And now everything goes into the shitter because of Elon's hurt feelings.

Ha imagine using Twitter

Not surprising, knowing how childish this guy is. I mean he's literally promoting his own tweets in the "For You" tab to people who haven't blocked him, despite these people not even following or interacting with his tweets in any kind of way...

Except for his account, I'd bet.

Yeah, totally expecting that. His aim of buying twitter, is to prop up a republican presidential candidate / authoritarians in other countries that can help him evade taxes and get more subsidies.

...what the fuck???

Elon trying not to make the worst decisions possible challenge (Impossible)

Hey Twitter, it’s not a competition. You can get rid of your users at whatever pace suits you best. Even though Reddit is clearly speedrunning this game, and you’re getting left behind, doesn’t mean you have to double your efforts.

I'd wager this is in response to the campaign going around to block every blue checkmark. Elon can't let his crowd of sycophants feel like they're being ignored.

I have blocked only one person on Twitter: him.

he's pissed because people started installing browser extensions like Block The Blue

How in the world is that a good idea...

Here's the context, bigots complaining about being blocked

Ayyyy Elon, so we're going for full chaos??

Lemme grab my popcorn before the change starts a nuclear reaction.

Surely a sight to behold. Lol

That sounds like the most stupid shit ever. I'm usually not the person that blocks a lot. I believe in 5 years of twitter i maybe blocked 3 accounts plus a couple of spam bots. But still...like...why would you think that this is a good idea?

Musk and his backers (various authoritarian regimes) probably intended only to amplify the voices of the far right and other loonies, not to kill the platform itself. But that was always going to be difficult to thread that needle, made impossible by Musk's absolute lack of self awareness or self control. The fact that not only Musk is going to lose a lot of money when Twitter dies fills me with joy.

You cannot make this f-ing UP! Twitter is indeed a dumpster fire.

Bro it's like he WANTS us to only see t shirt ads

I can’t wait for other social media platforms to do the same thing. Social media companies are so stagnant they just copy what other companies do without thinking if it’s a good idea or not.

Serious question: is musk actively trying to run twitter into the ground for some kind of financial benefit, or is he just an arrogant asinine asshole who has no idea what he's doing?

Correction: Twitter is removing the block feature so that tweets can reach the full audience...

Are you kidding? Being able to block people who are harraing you is the ONLY thing that keeps social media civil. What the actual fuck.

4channers are gonna abuse the hell out of this for some fun. Can guarantee it.

Doesn't he himself use this feature a ton? 😂

I’m happier since I don’t use twitter. Thanks Elon, you’re making things easier for us.

This can't be serious...

Elons probably tired of everyone blocking him. If everyone blocks him, then no one can with this new “feature” lol

Wow. He really is a tool.

I only see this as going well for him/Twitter.

Not really, it’s definitely going to be interesting to watch it go up in flames 🍿

First thing I did after he bought Twitter is block him. Did I hurt his feelings?

(Not that I follow what's going on with Twitter anymore since I found Mastodon.)

Anyone still on Twitter (who doesn’t absolutely need to be on Twitter for their job) must either enjoy harassing others or somehow enjoy being harassed?

I have no clue why anyone who isn’t a right-wing dingbat would use Twitter for fun or whatever. It’s so not fun to be on a platform run by a little manbaby, for a little manbaby.

Well damn, the only way I use twitter is by liberally blocking everything and just getting news from stuff I care about, since there is no other platform like it that everyone uses and updates regularly. They already started pushing stuff to my feed that I don't follow, now they are removing the ability to block and keep my feed clean too? They really are doing everything in their power to make me stop using it huh

I just don't understand some of these decisions...

So how will they comply with court orders requiring that function? /smh

LOL that is probably because I've been blocking Elon's profile for a while now. I'm pretty sure this has to do with his profile being blocked by more and more people.

I wonder where the fandoms and the artist communities are going to go now that they just opened the floodgates for the massive amount of harassment those communities tend to deal with.

I presume some are going to return to Tumblr, but hopefully they make the switch to Mastodon.

Is this meant to be the final response to #BlocktheBlue

Time to promote the hell out of Mastodon

3rd-party Twitter clients are going to have quite a spike in popularity then, just need to implement clientside blocking. It won't prevent the person blocked from seeing your posts, but that's kind of impossible to enforce on a public platform, anyway.

LOL, WHAT?! That's absolutely stupid.

You could see this coming the moment we started blocking blue checkmarks.

This level of nob gobbling takes focus.

I have him blocked. I can't stand seeing his posts!

One step away from A Clockwork Orange where users' eyes will be held open so they are forced to see fashy-curious content

This kind of garbage is exactly why I don't use Twitter anymore. I don't know what is wrong with Musk, but something is up in his head.

When toxic idiots on Twitter drive everyone off, they'll be the only ones left.

Then they'll turn on each other, harassing bots and trolls who'll scream that nothing's being done because they are being dragged.

Then when only the most toxic are left, and they have no one else to intimidate, harass, or make miserable; they'll leave.

It keeps getting worse it's almost funny

RIP Twitter

@dirtmayor Now that's just stupid. And I generally like the guy.

So…. You just get hit with ad bots all day long?

I've blocked every ad I've ever seen on the app. I haven't used it in a while and I doubt I'll ever go back now.

The only thing left that I use it for is getting alerts about live police chases so I can tune in. Ill leave that going until those people move to other platforms.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What could possibly go wrong?

I mean, why would you be surprised at anything at this point?

I reckon he's just really really fucking short-sited tbh. He seems to forget that there are people on twitter, or were tbh.

I think I get were the “server costs” come from. The twitter algorithm they pushed to GitHub FIRST gets a set of like a thousand tweets to show you, then filters them, getting rid of blocked accounts for example. If you use one of the large block lists, you know, to bypass the lack of moderation, there is the “risk” that they neeed to do another request to get enough content to fill your front page of irrelevant stuff you don’t want to see.

Pre Twitter takeover this would have been surprising. Now seems par for the course.

It's unclear if he's distinguishing posts from the users that make them.

Blocking users is important, but posts less so (but I still loved to block posts if they were obnoxious and kept getting shared)

I didn't know Elon joined Mastodon's marketing team!

This is fan service for his troglodytes.

Who else would give them such opportunities?

Up next, everyone who joins Twitter gets a free king Cobra delivered to them at a random point in the future.

Is advertising revenue so important to them they're willing to sacrifice literally everything else for it?

If it's not easy to use reddit, who will use reddit?

Wait. Is twitter still a thing? 😉

Isn't this because he doesn't want to pay Google's bill that they already signed a deal with? I hope Twitter implodes and Elon loses millions

@elonmusk and u/Spez walk into a bar...

This is so dumb it must be out of context.

I assume he will still have the block button though.

The source showed the tweet as an image, so I went into the sewer waters from Fritter. And, yep, it's genuinely there.

It's not even that I believe him unable to have such bad takes: it's not the first time. I have just seen a few fake ones. But the fake ones aren't even needed!

Wouldn't this open Twitter up to harassment charges? I mean, it's Musk so it is obviously an ego thing and not a well thought out idea, but couldn't someone sue because they can no longer block someone tweeting hateful things to them?

Lmao what a dumb idea

I hate Elon as much as the next guy but from reading the article he talks about stopping the blockage of public posts. Doesn't this make sense? You can just go into incognito mode and look at their account anyway. As far as I can tell, you still won't be able to interact with the user.

It's like when the whole Trump blocking people was being talked about as not allowing citizens to see public information that the president tweeted. I know that ordinary citizens is totally different, but again, if your account is public people that you block will find a way to look at your posts if they want to.

Battle royale!

It's sad seeing Twitter take such a nose dive (more so then it already has). I met quite a fee friends on the platform and, despite it's many, many, MANY flaws, was still nice to be on when you interacted with friends. I hope my friends start using more decentralized social media soon with how much of a toxic environment Elon is trying to foster

WTF is “a stronger form of mute?”

Good. Nobody should be forced to kiss your ass cuz you're too much of a pussy to stand up for yourself.

Days since Musk fucks-up Twitter further: 0

Not that the number was that high anyway U_U

Where’s my popcorn?

Ol' Phoney Stark and his usual antics.