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Will Google and Apple save the block feature on Twitter/X?

Britta Pedersen/Pool via AP

Earlier today we talked about how Elon Musk announced that he was going to take away the block feature. We believe this is an absolutely terrible idea. However, as one person pointed out, that is might violate the terms of service of Apple’s App store and Google’s Play store:

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Now, to be fair, it appears that the Google terms of service more clearly requires a block button, but in the end Twitter might find itself being threatened with being removed from either store and that means removing Twitter from millions of phones. As you might recall, when there were rumors that Apple would remove the app from its store when Musk took over, Musk threatened to create his own phone company. Who knows whether or not he might revive the idea.

We do think blocking is a very useful feature to have. When users do get obnoxious, or it otherwise makes sense to cut them out of your mentions, we prefer to mute people. Then they can receive your wisdom without bothering you. We prefer the freest flow of information possible.

But some people get so obsessive that muting isn’t enough. They start to reply to every person who replies to you, which often prompts that person to reply to them, putting them in your notifications against your will.

It also makes it easier for obnoxious people who have high follower counts to direct swarms of people to you:

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We know of several high follower accounts who will denounce you (often behind a block) and the result is often just dozens of people spamming your account. And, of course, those people would be much more tolerable if they engaged in discussion, but instead around 90% of them just say ‘your dumb’ or something like that (and with that spelling, too). We are not sure all of these accounts know they are having this effect, but the effect degrades the user experience.

And, well, bluntly, this author is a man. We suspect it gets much creepier for women. For instance, imagine some creep sending pictures to every person a woman engages with, with a photoshop of her face on a naked woman's body.

Naturally, more and more people are weighing in.

You do not have the right to listen to every speaker if they don’t want you to. If you are discussing politics with your wife, does a stranger have a right to come into your home and listen? If you are discussing business on the phone does a third party have a right to join the call, even if everyone else in the call doesn’t want him or her to? As we have pointed out in the past, even a politician can exclude a person from his rally, if he doesn’t want that person there. 

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Indeed, the only solution for someone in her position is to set her tweets to protected—assuming Musk doesn’t prevent us from doing that, too. And that kills site engagement and growth of each user. 

That user is being hypocritical but is right about the value of blocking.

Even XDaily, which Musk follows, agrees this is a bad move:

Musk responded:

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As one silver lining, they might make muting more muscular? This guy’s profile says he is ‘Building the product development infrastructure @ http://X.com’ suggesting he has something to do with how Twitter/X works.

The rest of the Tweet says:

Preventing an account from seeing your posts does not work in practice. Anyone with any intent can find out what you post by simply creating another account or logging out

There are currently workarounds for blocking people that could allow that person to continue to bother you. But most of these people are too lazy to constantly use those work arounds. So far, whenever this author has had to block a person, that removed that person and their followers from his mentions.

Still, if muting eliminated the possibility of quote tweets and spamming replies, that would help. But it would not eliminate the problems. Yes, some people overuse blocking. But we think on balance it is useful enough that it shouldn’t go away completely.

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