Twitter removes blocking function – The app formerly known as Twitter has once again continued its death spiral by announcing its plan to take the block function away from its users. Its announcement was first informally told by the platform’s former CEO Elon Musk on Twitter just last week.
Ever since its acquisition, Elon has made a hefty amount of changes to his platform and some if not most of them, has attracted quite a bit of controversy such as when he announced that he limits the daily amount of posts that users can see or when he changed Twitter’s name to a word “X”. This time however, Elon’s new de facto policy really contradicts the very fundamentals of any social media platform as he plans to eradicate the blocking function from Twitter (now known as X).
To be more detailed, Musk’s plan is not to entirely remove the block function as he wrote in his tweet in reply to @teslaownersSV that “Block is going to be deleted as a “feature”, except for DMs”. The original tweet from Tesla Owners Silicon Valley was a question about whether there is a need to block or mute someone.
Obviously, it got perceived horribly
Without a doubt, this sudden announcement raises another uproar from plenty of users as there are obviously lots of reasons why the block function should exist.
One obvious reason is to help tailor our browsing experience exactly to things that we wanted to see as sometimes the algorithm may show contents that are either irrelevant or don’t sit with what users believe in. The other obvious example is to avoid confrontation either from trolls or users with bad faith.
The original tweet poster even disagreed with Elon’s statement as they wrote that the block function really comes in handy to steer up from trolls and spammers.
It could also lead the platform to be removed from Android and Apple
Another reason why this plan would be a disaster if passed through is that it would result in Twitter (or X) being blacklisted from both Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
This is because both Google and Apple have a terminology guideline that requires any form of app or service that has user-generated content to have an in-app system that allows users to block content that they do not wish to see. Having them removed means that the platform could potentially lose a huge chunk of its audience, especially in the era where mobile phones are predominantly used.
Bottom line
Just around last week, Elon Musk announced plans for X to remove blocking functions. The formerly known Twitter platform would risk losing its mobile audience as both Google and Apple have a strict policy that prohibits any services that feature user-generated content to not have a built-in blocking function.
The idea obviously also fails to be well received among X’s user base as this function is essential to help avoid users with bad faith or just to help tailor the browsing experience to content that the user wanted to see.
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