Elon Musk promised on Friday that he’d kill off the block feature from X, the website formerly known as Twitter. If the immediate reaction is any clue, it would prove an unpopular change.
Musk went on a reply spree Friday, commenting back to both random posts and posts directed at him. He responded to a tweet about blocking vs. muting with the promise to kill off the block feature entirely.
“Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” Musk wrote. “It makes no sense.”
The claim from Musk was wildly unpopular, even among the folks who paid for blue checks, who are typically staunch fans of the X/Twitter owner.
“Block creates a safe border. I block the vicious people and the spammers,” one wrote. “I’ve had to block people who were trying to find out where I live and find out about my children,” wrote another with the handle @libertarianmama.
Another posted that a meme indicating this was one rare instance liberals and conservatives agreed: getting rid of the block is awful. Even the typically pro-Musk account “X News Daily” posted that it was “going too far” and that blocking has “an important role to combat harassment, trolls and spam.” Again, these are all blue check users, indicating they’re happily paying X and Musk to use the site.
It’s unclear why Musk would remove the block function beyond pandering to the idea of “free speech.” In the replies he indicated you’d still be able to mute users and block them from DMing, but not actually block them altogether.
To be clear, Musk often promises things and isn’t always keen to follow through. The cage match with Mark Zuckerberg is one high profile example. So it remains to be seen if blocking is ultimately removed. But if it is, it seems no one will be happy.
