The latest change that Musk is considering for his social network X, formerly known as Twitter, is one of the most radical. In response to a user’s comments, Musk has revealed that he is considering removing the account lockout feature, widely used to limit spam and offensive comments. It is not the first time that he has referred to this possibility – he already said something similar last June – but it is likely that the function will be eliminated soon. Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter, also agrees with the change.
Account blocking is an option available for years that allows not only to stop seeing the tweets of a specific account, but also prevents this account from following or seeing the tweets of the person who blocks it. The option, therefore, is widely used to get rid of spam accounts or users who often make offensive comments or try to get involved in conversations to which they have not been invited.
In response to an open question from the Silicon Valley Tesla Owners Association, Musk revealed that the lock is “going to be removed as a tool soon,” explaining that it doesn’t make sense since the option to mute a key also exists on the platform. account. The only exception will be direct messages (DM).
Block is going to be deleted as a “feature”, except for DMs
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 18, 2023
Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter -now X-, responded to Musk’s announcement by giving his approval for the same reason. The mute option, which came later to the social network, makes more sense for muting users.
But while muting and blocking look alike, there’s an important difference. The first one only prevents seeing the messages of a certain account but does not prohibit the account from following the user, which opens the door for them to be able to follow the conversations and even participate in it, without the author knowing.
original but making the answers visible to other users. This is why blocking is generally preferred over muting.
It is also the reason that possibly irritates Musk, since a blockage lowers the level of interaction on the social network. Even if the author of the message does not see the response given by a silenced person, the response exists, and counts within the platform’s audience and participation figures.
It’s unclear if Musk will be able to get away with it, in any case. Both Google and Apple require within the rules of their app stores that social media apps have a feature that allows users to block messages. The language in the standards is vague, possibly referring to a requirement for the service and not for its users. In other words, social networks have to have a system to be able to block a user on their platform if they behave offensively, regardless of whether or not the rest of the users can block them individually.
The mute option could also be enough to satisfy these requirements in the second case, but so far no social network has tried it. In general the option to block works in all of them as it worked in X until now, not only removing the blocked user from the visible message lists but also preventing him from seeing the messages or photos of the blocker in the future.