Why Changes to the Block on Elon Musk’s X Are Driving Users Away

Elon Musk’s When blocking policies change, people who have been blocked by someone can still see that person’s posts as long as they are public. They simply can’t like, repost, or comment on these posts.

“Blocking public messages makes no sense,” Musk said on X last year. “It should be abandoned in favor of a stronger form of mute.”

Jack Dorsey, former co-founder and CEO of Twitter, agreed with this sentiment. In a sense, Dorsey and Musk have a point. If someone blocks you, you can still find their public posts on most social media platforms. You just need to log out of your own account. But Tracy Chou, founder of the anti-harassment tool Block Party, argues that this extra bit of friction matters.

Chou wrote on making it easy for a climbing plant to crawl is not a good thing!!

Many X users agreed with Chou, sparking more interest on other platforms. Bluesky, a Twitter alternative, added another 1.2 million users in the past two days as users looked for an alternative to , from No. 181 the previous day.

These growth spurts do not always translate into long-term use. But unlike some other platform updates – such as Twitter’s name change to X – this policy change isn’t just symbolic. It’s a step that prioritizes the experiences of people being blocked, rather than those doing the blocking, who are often at more immediate risk.

“Today, blocking can be used by users to share and hide malicious or private information about those they have blocked,” X’s tech team wrote in a post. “With this update, users can see if such behavior is occurring, providing greater transparency.”

This stance can be alienating to users who are more concerned about their own safety than this chosen scenario, where they could be blocked by someone who then shares information about them.

Claire Waxman, who works as an appointed Victims’ Commissioner in the London Mayor’s Office, is also concerned about the impact the changes could have on victims of abuse.

“This is a dangerous decision for a social media platform and will have serious consequences for the victims – especially those being stalked – and their safety,” Waxman wrote on abusers and stalkers, and facilitating their behavior.”

Colten Meisner, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University who researches harassment on social media, agrees.

“The blocking feature has been a first line of defense for people who are being harassed,” Meisner told TechCrunch. “It feels like there’s no other way to interpret this policy change than to say, ‘Victims of harassment, the first line of defense that you’ve had, we’re now going to take away.’ Because if you want views, if you want visibility, that’s what X is all about.”

Meisner also sees a trend in the way Musk’s personal beliefs and revenge actions have been reflected in platform policy.

“(Musk) is absolutely the archetype of the person being blocked, and so in a way it almost feels like a childish retaliation,” Meisner said. “Elon in particular has had a history of making policy changes essentially on his own whims.”

For example, X has at various times suppressed links to its competitors, such as Substack and Mastodon. The platform also once singled out NPR for the “state media” label, which is typically reserved for publications without editorial independence from the government (NPR receives less than 1% of its $300 million annual budget from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is federally financed).

On a platform that has already generated a marked increase in hate speech, the changes to the blocking feature are a harbinger of the same trend continuing.

“This policy change is just one huge step back in the history of harassment,” Meisner added.