Updated: Twitter/X's short-sighted block function update is here

Update (11/4/24, 11:57 P.M.): As the poor souls still populating Elon Musk’s decaying social media platform have probably noticed, the block function on X is now nothing more than a “mute” button. As of today, people users have blocked can see their posts and commence harassment.

Every time it seems like Elon Musk can’t possibly make another Worst Decision, he pops in with his dumb little jump to remind us that actually yeah, he can. His latest folly is purely X interface-related (that company name coming approximately 1,000 bad decisions ago), which is a slight relief amongst the onslaught of brain-melting election content and creepy robots no one asked for. 

Last month, Musk confirmed that changes were coming to X’s block feature, a previously simple and obvious function of any social media website meant to protect users and prevent harassment. Now, those benefits are largely being thrown out the window because the man in charge can’t stand the thought of people talking about him behind his back. Starting “soon,” accounts you’ve blocked will still be able to see all of your posts if your account is set to public, but won’t be able to interact with them in any way. (Previously, blocking an account would hide your posts from that user as well.) “High time this happened,” Musk wrote in his original post. 

To further clarify the policy today, X’s official engineering account added, “Today, block can be used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked. Users will be able to see if such behavior occurs with this update, allowing for greater transparency.”