X change lets blocked users see posts made by the people who blocked them.
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X, formerly Twitter, is now letting blocked users see posts made by the people who blocked them.
“We’re starting to launch the block function update,” X’s engineering team wrote yesterday. X previously said that after the change, “If your posts are set to public, accounts you have blocked will be able to view them, but they will not be able to engage (like, reply, repost, etc.).”
To justify the change, X said the block functionality could previously be “used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked.” The change will allow people who are blocked “to see if such behavior occurs… allowing for greater transparency,” X said.
X owner Elon Musk argued last year that “blocking public posts makes no sense. It needs to be deprecated in favor of a stronger form of mute.”
There were many angry responses to the change, both yesterday and previously, when X said it would be coming soon. While some users may only use blocking to avoid seeing accounts that are annoying, some X users said the policy could be harmful for people who use blocking as a safety measure.
The new policy could help stalkers and other bad actors, some said. Blocked accounts could view, screenshot, and share content posted by the person who blocked them, some people pointed out. The block button is now “a glorified mute button,” one user said.
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Blocked users can view and search for posts
Before the change, X’s support page on blocking accounts said blocked accounts cannot “view your posts when logged in on X (unless they report you, and your posts mention them,” “find your posts in search when logged in on X,” or “view a Moment you’ve created when logged in on X.”
Those limits are now removed from the support page. However, blocked accounts still cannot engage with your posts, follow you, send direct messages, add your X account to their lists, or tag you in a photo. As before, posts from blocked accounts will not appear in a user’s timeline.
It used to be easy to view tweets without being logged in. But last year, before Musk changed the platform name from Twitter to X, Twitter started blocking un-registered users from viewing tweets and user profiles. The change was apparently made to limit scraping, but also meant that people you blocked would have to use a different account to view your posts.
Claire Waxman, the Victims’ Commissioner in the London mayor’s office, said the policy change “is a dangerous decision for a social media platform, and will have serious implications for victims—especially those being stalked—and their safety. Enabling blocked users to see posts is catering to abusers and stalkers, indulging and facilitating their behaviours.”
“I’m sure someone from twitter (elon) is arguing that block evasions were always possible from other accounts but the point is that friction matters!! making it easy for a creeper to creep is not a good thing!!” wrote Tracy Chou, founder and CEO of Block Party, which makes a browser extension with bulk blocking and other features for social networks.
Some users questioned whether the new policy is allowable under the Apple and Google app store rules. Apple says that apps with user-generated content or social networking features must provide “the ability to block abusive users from the service,” while Google says that apps allowing “interaction with specific users (for example, direct messaging, tagging, mentioning, etc.) must provide an in-app functionality for blocking users.”
