Elon Musk has announced a big change for X (formerly Twitter): The removal of the “Block User” feature.
Musk started the day with a question for users on X ex Twitter Is there a reason to block or mute someone? A few hours later, he informed users that the feature to block users would be “removed” from the platform and would only apply to direct messages (DMs) going forward.
unfortunately, Musk didn’t give a reason for this change, but as you can imagine, it’s pretty important.
If you’ve never used X before, the action to block a user is self-explanatory and allows users to avoid unwanted interactions on the platform. The action also prevents blocked users from viewing that user’s public posts in It’s a powerful tool and while many have found it useful, it’s about to go away.
The block is deleted as a “Feature” except for DMs
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 18, 2023
What options remain beyond block?
X has other tools to prevent harassment and unwanted interactions. If you don’t want to see or interact with an account, you can mute it. This will prevent his posts from getting into your timeline or appearing in your notifications.
In addition, users can also make their accounts private so that only those who follow them can see the content. Furthermore, this mode does not allow users to follow freely as it requires authorization to follow first.
While a private account is a great solution, it gets tedious when you try to share tweets as they aren’t available to anyone but your current followers.
Currently, banning an account is still an active feature, and while Musk has announced that this feature will be discontinued, it’s unclear when that change will happen.