Musk’s plan to axe X's block button is a real win for stalkers and abusers.

Pretty sure he’s doing this simply because he doesn’t like how many people have blocked him personally

Taylor Swift blocked him and he can't have that
- He’s grumpy that she won’t see any additional jokes he makes about impregnating her

JUST. LEAVE. TWITTER.

I've practically been groveling begging my girlfriend to switch.
Its not that bad just ignore the ads
Yeah I don't go in replies because it's always bots
There's still some things on there
She didn't really catch onto mastodon, discoverability is the problem imo. May try getting her onto bluesky even though it wouldn't be my pick. Some people just like whatever they currently have more than change - which maybe not being able to block like EVERY OTHER media platform may be a big enough change.
- Basically nothing I follow is on anything else because they need the numbers. The few people that are just copy their twitter posts and never actually engage.
- Problem is people have gotten used to centralized platforms
A lot of people have professional reasons to be on Twitter. If you're trying to promote a business you need to be where the people are and none of the alternatives have anywhere near Twitter's size.
But ..the porn...
- By all means, keep posting and perusing porn on the platform, when that and Elon will be all that's left on Twitter, it'll be ok.
I use to keep in contact with my metal homies. That's about it.
- Using a corporate controlled advertising platform sounds like the least metal thing you can do.
- If you ever feel like trying Mastodon, https://metalhead.club is the instance you're looking for

It's a win for humanity if it causes more people to leave and stop thinking it's a public forum.

It IS a public forum though. The whole point of it, even dating back to it's inception, was very very public conversation. It was in stark contrast to facebook, which claimed to be privacy driven. As opposed to the mostly public myspace, and the completely public twitter.
- Since Musk took it, it’s more like an arena where the loudest and dumbest have the microphones. It is neither a haven for free speech nor a forum where legitimate discourse takes place. It has become the trash pit of the internet.
- City council meetings are public meetings. But if you go in there and start swearing your head off and using the N-word you will be removed because you are distupting the ability of rational people to have a discussion.
  Twitter has decided to let these freaks scream their heads off. This disrupting its ability to be used as a public forum. It is no longer a public forum. It’s just 4Chan now. Sane people wanting to have discussions don’t use 4Chan.

Reminder: if you still have an account with that fucko’s service-

You support everthing he does.

I’ve kept my account because it’s a sought after username. Deleting it would allow some grifter to take it over. It also predates both Elmo’s and the original Twitter accounts.
I’ve not posted anything under it since the third party apps were blocked.
Reminder: if you have american citizenship, all support everything those fucko's do
- People aren't born on Twitter.
- I promise you: you’re not harassing him. You ARE however, supporting him by having an account.
Reminder: if you purchase gas from BP, you support anything they've ever done.
Reminder: if you purchase a smart phone, you support child labor.
- I don’t believe I’m entertaining this ridiculous comparison, but….
  We NEED gasoline. We NEED telecommunications. You don’t NEED to tweet dumb shit about your breakfast or keep up with sports scores.
  You’re here to defend X, therefore you’re defending Elon. That’s how it works. Don’t like it, maybe don’t speak up for him next time.
- I never buy gas at BP or Exxon. Ever. Smart phone though? That's required for my job.

If the block feature goes away, I guarantee it will come back for - at the very least - the highest tier of paid accounts almost immediately afterwards.

I can't imagine any of the large corps that still use Xitter for customer communication will be happy not being able to block serial trolls. Or people with legitimate grievances who won't go away.

the block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, a public post
- Could be worse. I never liked the idea of blocking "hiding" your content from other people to begin with. It makes it too easy to give trolls the confirmation they succeeded in getting under your skin, encouraging them to make another account to continue harassing their victim.
Hopefully when Musk does this it will convince my addicted friends to drop the platform when their stalkers can all suddenly contact them again.
Or maybe it’ll get the EU to ban the platform like Brazil did.

I'm pretty sure both the App Store and the Google Play Store both require social media apps to have a block feature. Will be interesting to see what happens if he goes through with this.

Absolutely nothing. Rules on those stores are only for the little guys
- He backed down when Brazil blocked him. If Apple and Google decided to threaten to delist Twitter, he'll back down.

The delete account button is still there.

I'd say "for now", but at least we've got the EU protecting us from that possibility.

The ones who are most vulnerable to this change are the ones who especially should've left this platform already. I'm sorry, but they're not being forced to use it, and everyone should leave it. I don't have much sympathy or care about wanting to make an alt-right social media platform safer, I want it to crash and burn.

A lot of them are in-denial. I've seen them argue that Twitter isn't a Nazi platform and is used by normal people. Serves them right I guess, they were told it was a problem and they didn't want to listen.
The best way to cure network effect is with pain and suffering, and eventual forced deprivation (when the service shuts down).
Nice username thats gonna be worth big money some day
- Thx I'll sell you it as an nft
"BuT eVeRyOnE iS oN tWitTeR"
And will continue to be so long as everyone keeps showing Elon there is NOTHING he can do, say, or allow that will get people to leave.

I thought Twitter was once forced but a court to enable blocking for all users against all users. Isn't this why we are able to block advertisers?

i seem to remember something similar. and blocking advertisers seems like it should be common law but i guess chrome killing adblockers takes predesence.

When I comment that Twitter is trash and I'd never use it, the response I often get is 'it's actually pretty good after you block all the trolls and bots and corporate accounts and politicians and blue checks'... 🙄

Before the musk acquisition I had something like 8,000 people blocked… mostly the inane shit like “Patriot Christian Dog Mom” or incredible douchebags like “dc_draino”.

Remember to contact your political representative and express your concerns on any public organization account having an account on twitter. Also contact any journali of a media you use to read/watch and express the same concern.

Once politics and journalists get out of twitter is game over.

As much as I despise Musk and Twitter and hope that both die a painful death, what is actually proposed here is honestly a change for the better: It’s not about preventing people from blocking users, it’s about blocked users being able to see public posts, which they could also see by just logging out. This is being honest about what a block does and avoids giving people a wrong sense of privacy that they simply don’t have on the platform. From what I’ve heard there is a possibility to post for followers-only which in combination with requiring approval to follow and that isn’t going away here either…

Twitter massively reduced visibility for logged-out users, so just logging out doesn't help, you have to log into a different account. This additional fraction reduces the amount of harassment a lot. Not sure that being "more honest" is worth the price, especially when an info box could achieve the same without making harassment easier.
- Twitter massively reduced visibility for logged-out users,
  I know, but it still didn’t fully remove it.
  Not sure that being “more honest” is worth the price
  The thing is that there really is no price, nor was there ever one. Your suggestion that you think there is demonstrates that the way blocking worked gave people dangerously wrong ideas. It’s about being clear to people what they can and cannot expect. Anything else is ACTUALLY dangerous.
- Please read again what he changed and then try to figure out why your rationale is clearly not what this is about.
- That's the opposite of what's happening. In this case, Musk would have blocked you, and you would want to see his posts (for some reason). You could normally see a user who's blocked your posts by just opening the thread in an incognito tab to view as a logged out user. This just cuts out that step and lets you see the user's posts without doing that.

At this point if you're still on Shitter you kinda deserve whatever you get

I agree that X is enemy territory now, but in a world where billionaires can buy up all the major means of communication, it doesn't feel like enough to just close up our accounts and move on. They can follow us wherever our accounts go and buy platforms out from under us. Lemmy and Mastodon are slightly better as open decentralized platforms, but they still could be attacked by Musk if he had the initiative to.
- I'm saying it now: Get an amateur radio license and pay ARRL dues. We're going to need to protect that bandwidth.

People need to get the fuck off twitter.

Why the fuck does elon want to remove the block button on twitter like WHY????

So people can't block him, I imagine.
- That was the one action I took on Twitter after creating an account before my account got banned.
  I needed to create an account to check a local source for updates. So I did. I also decided to look around on Twitter to see what I was "missing". Saw a bunch of Musk stuff and instantly knew I didn't want to see any of it. So I blocked him.
  In a few weeks, when I clicked a Twitter link, it said my account had been banned for suspicious activity. It had a secure password and this was its second log-in ever (no posts, comments, reactions, etc).
- Pretty sure you already can't block him specifically, I'm not on Xitter but have heard from several people this is the case.
So he can tell women how he will give them babies or horses.
Otherwise how the bullies can continue to belittle the victim behind their backs?
Switching to throwaway accounts is boring

You can always count on this twat to do the dumbest, shittiest thing he can.

I feel Musk is an experiment testing what would happen if you gave an Internet troll of middling intelligence billions of dollars.

I have started to actively avoid brands, journalists etc. who still use Twitter as their primary social media presence.

Meanwhile, everybody will continue to refuse to leave the platform, further showing Elon that there is no price too high for people.

I swear I've read this exact headline a year or so ago already.

He keeps floating it, but hasent done it yet.
They clearly have internal data that top alt right posters are getting blocked too much for Musk's tastes, so here it is again.
Everythings made up, and the headlines don't matter.

I swear sometime he really seems like he is personally trying to kill twitter/x/xitter whatever it’s called.

Sacre bleu! It's almost like the free speech warrior does not know that the other aspect of free speech besides speaking freely is being able to choose whom to listen to! Does he think free speech means being forced to listen to specific people speak?

Surprised. Pikachu. Face.

Bet both my ovaries he just wants to stop using apt to look at all the people who blocked him

He could simply make his account invulnerable to it if that was his goal, no there's a deeper reason why he's making the change. Likely because he realizes too many people are blocking the alt-right users part of his paying simp army.
- you putting an awful lot of faith into the turd in cans intelligence

The billionaire this week posted his hoped-for change that “the block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, a public post”.

If I understand the change aright, that's an excellent move in my book.

What it sounds like Twitter is doing now is how Reddit used to work. When you ignore a user, you won't see their responses, but other users can.

Then Reddit changed it to "blocked user cannot respond", which people on Reddit promptly started abusing to, in heated arguments, make a comment and then promptly block the other person, so that it looked like they weren't responding. You wound up with people commenting all over a thread with stuff like "this user blocked me, but here's my response to this other comment". Was one of the several major moves that Reddit made that I think were in error and made me less happy with the site.

Lemmy works the same way Reddit originally did as well; that's how I'd want social media to generally work.

EDIT: It might also be that this is only a partial move in that direction, so that a block prevents a user from responding but not seeing a post. If so, that'd be an improvement, I think, but not as far as I'd like things to change.

There's a huge difference between what a site like Reddit is used for and how Twitter is often used for. Reddit is all about discussion, so blocking discussion is bad (as you pointed out). Twitter is used a little for discussion (their character limit doesn't really allow much discussion), but it's mostly used for informing the world about whatever you are doing or care about. Famous people and companies use it for advertising, and normal people use it for letting people know what's going on in their world. Stalkers can use this information to figure out where people are in the world. Being able to COMPLETELY block a stalker is a good thing. Now people with stalkers will once again be afraid to openly say what they are doing in the world.
- But there's nothing to stop a stalker just making another account to follow you if they really want to. I dont see blocking doing much good there as there is no such thing as being able to stop your public posts being viewed, because they're public.
  I still think its a bad idea to remove blocking just becuase people want to remove things they dont want to see (like right wing billionaire arseholes) but I dont think giving people a false sense of security is a good reason against it.

other than userbase, what does twitter have that mastodon does not have? genuinely curious

Better media and infrastructure support, name recognition, corporate privacy issues instead of no privacy whatsoever, ads, pay-to-win social 'cred' (blue check-mark), an insane leader, and an algorithm controlling your content.
- Better media and infrastructure support
  the only positive you've stated lol. man, do I wish the fediverse would take off
- name recognition
  Though that is debatable, given how hard that they've been trying to shed it for the "X" name for ages.
Shit tons of racists.
An egotistical twat at the helm.
Ability to actually find interesting content. I want an algo, but at this point I want more of what Bluesky does but for Mastodon.
- good point, I agree.

Everthing he does is a win for them.

But I need that to block the 15 bots that follow me each day

Journalist James Ball noted that this is not the first time that Musk has made similar threats to reimagine the block function, suggesting it may be a false alarm.
- But hey, at least we got to sell more ad space by printing another article about it...

I mean, Twitter's blocking policy goes way too far... but axing them completely? I dunno about that one chief.

lol, what?

Where's the "CALL ME THE MEME LORD" meme

Does really seem that stalkers are often overlooked by devs, so it's great to see something that finally caters to them for once. Said no one ever.

But he'll still have a block button. He's a real Republican now.

A browser plugin bringing the functionality back would probably do well.

That makes no sense. You can filter them out of your feed pretty easily, but they'll still be able to interact with you and of course bring a lot of new toxic users to you. Your browser can't do anything about that, it's entirely Twitter's side.
- I meant in terms of hiding a particular user.
  To me, blocking means "I don't see $". Not "$ doesn't see me". Ad blocking, script blocking, site blocking via DNS, etc is my mental model.