This weekend, X (formerly Twitter) announced that «is starting to roll out», a controversial change to the platform’s user blocking mechanism. The company’s owner Elon Musk first announced these changes in September. They will allow people you have blocked to continue to see your posts and your follower lists.
While users will now be able to see posts from accounts that have blocked them, the ability to interact will be extremely limited. Blocked users will not be able to follow, like, reply to, reblog, repost, send private messages, or interact with the posts of the party that has blocked them.
Musk has stated that a ban on viewing your public posts «makes no sense». Last month, X argued that people who block others can say harmful things about the blocked person who will not know about it. Accordingly, this change in blocking rules provides «with more transparency».
But now the new changes may make it easier for blocked users to continue harassing someone. But as Tracy Chow, who launched the Block Party anti-stalking tool, pointed out in a post on X: «…the point is that creating obstacles is important!! making it easier for the stalker to follow — is bad!!»
Another question is whether the updated blocking feature complies with the rules in the app stores? Apple’s guidelines state that apps with user-generated content should have «the ability to block aggressive users from using the service».
Google’s guidelines are even more specific and indicate that UGC features that allow user interaction (e.g., private messages, tagging, mentioning, etc.) should provide user blocking functionality in the application. And applications that provide access to publicly available UGC, such as social networks and blogs, should implement functionality for complaining about users and content, as well as blocking users.
Source: The Verge