X to weaken blocking feature despite fears of harassment and privacy | Technical news

Currently, harassers can block their targets to prevent them from seeing if they share messages about them.

It says the platform will move towards “greater transparency” thanks to the change.

Critics claim it will give more power to “stalkers and harassers” by making it much easier for them to see the content posted by their targets.

“So now the Block feature is essentially useless,” one user wrote in response to X’s announcement.

Another wrote: ‘The whole point of the block button is that I don’t want them to know I exist.’

Advocates pointed out that the block had already been weakened by the ability to create alternate accounts.

‘The X app already makes it trivially easy to switch to an alt account to bypass a block. You don’t lose any security with this change,” one person said.

The changes are greatly toned down from Elon Musk’s original plan to “remove” the ability to block people, except in X’s direct messaging platform.

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