Elon Musk is going to scrap an important tool people have long used to stop harassment on Twitter: the ability to block an account.
"Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature,’ except for DMs [direct messages]," Musk tweeted on Friday, adding that the option "makes no sense."
By blocking an account, you can prevent someone from following your account on Twitter, viewing your tweets, seeing your follower list, or tagging you in photos. Hence, it’s a powerful tool that can stop someone from harassing you on the social media platform.
But it looks like Musk isn’t a fan. He’s been trying to make the company—recently rebranded as X—into a town square focused on free speech. Removing the block function means high-profile users can no longer bar specific people from viewing their accounts, unless it's private.
Musk offered no timetable on when the block feature will be removed. But he’s defending his decision by saying he favors the "mute account" function as a replacement. “You will still be able to mute accounts and block users for DMs,” he wrote in response to concerned users.
It’s true the mute function can automatically remove someone’s tweets from appearing in your timeline. In addition, any replies or mentions from the muted account won’t appear in your notifications tab. But a potential harasser can still view your tweets and reply to them, which the rest of the public could see.
It’s why some critics are blasting Musk for wanting to remove the feature, saying it’ll only open the floodgates for more online abuse. “You know what Nazis used to do in my Twitter replies, before I started using mass block tools? They'd give my home address out to OTHER Nazis in my replies who had expressed an interest in murdering my family and me,” tweeted Philadelphia activist and writer Gwen Snyder.
Meanwhile, others are skeptical Musk can remove the block account feature, saying it could violate privacy rules the company agreed to in the US and European Union. A rule on Apple's App Store also states a product like X needs to include "the ability to block abusive users from the service" if it wants to be listed.