X’s block changes will further endanger its users

The Nazi troll crew called themselves “The Shed,” and you weren’t supposed to write about them.

Writing about them meant getting their attention, and getting their attention meant experiencing some of the most despicable forms of online abuse imaginable. They lived to harass, and they were well versed in every troll tactic in the book.

If you earn their attention, they will swarm you. You might see your home address posted, your reputation destroyed by impersonator accounts, or your family held at gunpoint after a “prank” 911 call. It could have been The Shed, or one of the many Nazi hornet’s nests that happily swarm around their instigations. Either way, they would cause you misery.

How would they like to target you? By reading your tweets, of course.

How can you reduce the chances of them reading your tweets? By blocking every Twitter account (now X) associated with it. It is a necessary defensive measure that X’s Elon Musk has decided to neutralize.

As the technical team of the social media platform announced to users Wednesday, Blocking a troll no longer prevents him or her from reading your tweets. It will suddenly be a lot easier for stalkers, abusers, and harassers to keep tabs on their victims and direct the harassment their way immediately.

It’s that immediacy that makes this shift so treacherously dangerous. Massive intimidation campaigns are like snowballs in the sun. With a slow roll, the snowball melts faster than it can pick up new snow. However, if it gains momentum, even the midday sun is no match for that rapid accumulation. The snowball becomes a snow block in no time.

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Twitter was far from perfect before Musk, but it did ensure that victims of harassment could at least put up some meaningful roadblocks that could slow such a snowball before it gained steam. The block button allowed you to prevent a troll account from contacting you or seeing your content. Third-party mass blocking tools also allowed you to block the followers of that troll account, making it harder for them to collectively inundate you with harassment. The moderation wasn’t great, but generally you could get the site to ban users who directly threatened your life or family, or posted explicit Nazi content.

Musk has already dismantled X’s moderation system for hate speech and harassment and implemented changes that make mass blocking unworkable. Its latest move – allowing abusers and stalkers to freely view their targets’ content even if it’s blocked – focuses on X’s most basic and necessary anti-harassment feature. Trolls no longer have to bother switching to shadow accounts switch to stalk; their profession will be much more efficient. That efficiency translates into speed, and that speed helps the snowball grow. The less friction an intimidator experiences when stirring up hatred, the greater the chance of success for his mass intimidation campaign.

(Musk) seems determined to make the website an increasingly hospitable echo chamber for the worst humanity has to offer.

And let’s be clear: ‘success’ here can mean not only psychological torture, but also endangering the targets with offline terror. I speak from experience. When I was just a few weeks postpartum in 2021, there was a loud knock on our door and I found armed police officers outside. The Nazis had sent them there with a fake 911 call, hoping that a SWAT team would shoot first and ask questions later. After a brief conversation, I was able to safely convince the police to leave; others have not been so lucky.

Since then, Elon Musk has gleefully made X an open haven for Nazis and abusers. There isn’t much to do to force him to change; the man has a majority stake and has very publicly leveled profanity-laced abuse at his own advertisers. He seems determined to make the website an echo chamber for the worst humanity has to offer, especially violent misogynists, transphobes and white supremacists.

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What we can change is the influence of the platform. Although its reach is slowly decreasing, X remains a standard home and broadcast system not only for politicians and journalists, but also for government agencies, news services and elected officials. Every day that these people and organizations choose to communicate via X is a day that vulnerable people are forced to choose between their dignity and their access to their news, political representation and taxpayer-funded services.

It’s time for these leaders to actually take the lead and pave a path that leads beyond

Without that leadership and exodus, marginalized people will be forced to make an impossible choice: endure harassment, or give up meaningful access to the communications of the government they fund and the officials sworn to represent them.

There is no way around it anymore. Twitter is dead, replaced by the cesspool that is Elon Musk’s

There is a way out; it’s time to take it. It’s time to say goodbye.

Gwen Snyder is a writer, researcher, and longtime organizer in Philadelphia. That’s her @gwensnyder.bsky.social on Bluesky.