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Sav's avatar

I do not use Twitter anymore and left over a year ago as I feared for my safety and I do not agree with any changes made since the takeover.

The block button is essential for me to remove spammers, bots and people I no longer keep in touch. If it was removed on other social platforms I would leave and will have nowhere to communicate and share my content which will not be good.

Removing safety features is a big no-no and moderation is key for the safety of everyone.

Paul's avatar

If he wants the platform to fail, just turn the servers off, why put the users at risk.

CelestialFlea's avatar

Coming at it from another angle I can kind of see what Musk is saying here. Block is pretty useless because if someone really wants to, they can and will view your posts. So it makes sense to say well, why not get rid of it?

But I also don't agree with removing it completely without something robust in it's place that protects user privacy when it comes to unwanted viewers, trolls and general toxicity.

Give every user the ability to make their accounts private for those who just want to socialise within certain groups and not just for paid users. That way if you decide to keep your account public you'll just have to accept the fact that well, it's public and part of being on a social network.

Boomer's avatar

Fair point that you can still see the posts if you're determined but the block feature makes it a little harder. There'll never be a perfect solution but every little obstacle reduces the likelihood they'll keep trying.

Sturmer's avatar

I don’t know the exact reasons for this change, but I can see its benefits. Before you start criticizing me, please give me a chance to explain XD.

It seems like X is shifting towards greater transparency, moving in the direction of a true forum—similar to the ancient Greek concept. When you enter the space and speak, everyone can hear you. If there’s something you want to discuss privately or you're not ready to share, then a public forum might not be the best place.

The old block button gave a delusion of security. CelestialFlea said the same thing

Let’s say you constantly post about your location, activities, and personal life online. If someone starts stalking you, you block them, right? Then, feeling safe, you continue sharing your life with the internet. But what can a stalker do? Simply log out or create a new account, and they can still watch your actions or comment. Because, in a forum-like space, once you post or share something, you lose control over it. It’s instantly archived by bots, search engines, data scrapers, and who knows what else. Once you post something, you can't delete it, period.

By removing these pseudo-safety measures, the platform is highlighting that you are in a public space- watch what you say or show. For those concerned about privacy, the rule is simple: don’t post anything that could be used against you or compromise your privacy. The responsibility lies with you, not the platform.

CelestialFlea's avatar

Brilliant post! Said it a much more eloquently than me. I think many are just having a knee jerk reaction without looking at the bigger picture or trying to understand the reasoning.

Boomer's avatar

I see where you're coming from but if transparency is their goal then why is it harder to view posts without logging in?

My view is it's about the denial of power.

Blocking someone is meant to empower users to protect themselves, even if the feature isn't 100% effective. Removing the feature denies users that power an instead gives it (the power to ignore boundaries) to those who would otherwise be blocked.

It's one thing to build a platform like that from the ground up, but doing that to hundreds of millions of users is another thing entirely.

MURRRAAAAY's avatar

I actually deleted the twitter and facebook apps from my phone a few weeks ago to make room for a software update and I can say I have missed neither at all, and I’d go as far to say I feel happier not being on twitter everyday as it is bursting with negativity and you just end up doom scrolling, I find in its place I’ve been using threads a bit more. I am enjoying it as it’s way less negative but the content seems to be very similar all the time as if it just keeps showing me different users posting pretty much the same thing, interested to see how threads evolves.

MURRRAAAAY's avatar

Ps one other factor that led me to this is I found that blocking or muting terms / words on twitter rarely worked and would end up showing me stuff I didn’t want to see which is super annoying

Amoni P's avatar

I still have a Twitter account and once in a blue moon post to it, but I don't use it nearly as much as I did pre-Musk's Enshittenification.

Imagine being such a horrible person that the only way you can see and be seen is to remove the block feature from all the users.

This might be the thing that makes me delete Twitter permanently.

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