Twitter Will Soon No Longer Let You Block People

Twitter users’ ability to block people is going away for the most part, Twitter owner Elon Musk said this week. In response to another user’s question on the beleaguered social media platform, Musk said that the block feature “is going to be deleted” and would only exist in one form that would allow people to block others from sending them direct messages. The response to the announcement has been in line with other reactions to past Twitter developments with people wondering why that feature’s even being messed with while also worrying about what their online interactions will look like moving forward.

Musk responded to a Tesla-focused Twitter account that pondered whether there was any point in blocking someone over just muting them instead. Musk shared two responses to the tweet which served as our first indication that the block feature was going away.

“Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” Musk said in response.

He continued in the second tweet to say “It makes no sense,” but others weren’t in agreement. in responses to the initial tweet from the Tesla account, people pointed out that blocking someone prevents them from accessing your tweets and other information shared via your Twitter account. Sure, there are workarounds to it such as people creating alt accounts or just sifting through what normal search engines share about someone’s Twitter account, but blocking someone makes for a much more direct, quick option against aggravators or bad actors.

With this option apparently being removed, some have expressed that going to become increasingly more challenging to communicate over Twitter. Griffin Bennett, the global social media lead for Bungie, indicated as much by sharing a perspective from a game developer who one would imagine is frequently the target of disgruntled complaints from the Destiny 2 community.

“If true, I couldn’t recommend continuing any form of dev communication on this platform,” Bennett said about the news. “Too unsafe.”

Through things like allowing Twitter Blue subscribers to hide their checkmark and avoid ridicule, Twitter has recently been catering more to those premium subscribers, and this removal of the Block feature can somewhat be seen as an extension of that. Since Twitter Blue subscribers’ responses to tweets are boosted, many have taken to simply blocking or muting subscribers or just hiding their tweets, so removing the block feature would remove at least one of those options moving forward.

Musk did not give a timeframe for when this change will happen.