What you need to know
- Elon Musk announces X will remove the ability to “block” someone everywhere except in DMs.
- Blocking is a crucial function that can aid a person’s safety on social media platforms.
- Musk’s controversial decision could breach Google’s Play Store guidelines for apps hosting user-generated content.
Elon Musk is making another decision that has X posters in an uproar as some are rallying behind a crucial social media feature.
The owner of X posted on Friday that the ability to block users “is going to be deleted as a ‘feature,’ except for DMs.” This was posted as a response to another post asking whether or not there’s a reason behind such action or even muting another person on the platform.
X’s block feature brings a bit of totality to removing someone aggressive or heinous — even spam accounts — from your social media experience. It functions a little differently from X’s “mute” button, which just conceals their tweets from your view.
Block is going to be deleted as a “feature”, except for DMsAugust 18, 2023
Curiously, though, Musk’s choice to remove such a key safety feature may breach app guidelines Google requires all developers to follow before listing. Users have started grudging up counter-arguments such as the aforementioned policies for apps which state apps with user-generated content must provide “an in-app system for blocking UGC and users.”
It appears as though the same can be said for Apple’s App Store. However, this is still unconfirmed if this plays into the users’ hands or the hands of the service.
Musk hasn’t given a concrete timeframe for when users can expect the block option to disappear everywhere except in DMs.
X’s owner is no stranger to controversial decisions that lead posters to voice their opinions. Though, Musk has gone back on his word once in accordance with the removal of “light mode” for X’s UI. Musk stated light mode would stay and “dim” would go, leaving dark mode as the platform’s new default UI theme.
Another recent change saw X Pro (formerly TweekDeck) being shoved behind an X Premium paywall if users would like to access the application.
