Elon Musk is taking away your ability to block anyone on ‘X’

Yes, you read that right. In another decision that makes little sense to anyone who has spent five minutes on X, formerly Twitter. A place that is infamous for giving voice to cyber bullies, hate speech and all types of controversial people will soon take away the feature to block anyone.

Elon Musk, the owner of X, announced on Friday in yet another controversial move that users of the social media website won’t be able to block other accounts.

The block feature allows a user to restrict another user from seeing their posts, contacting them, or following them.

But there’s a small relief, users will still be able to block any specific accounts from sending them Direct Messages (DM).

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

The social media website will, however, retain its mute function, which screens a user from seeing specific accounts. Unlike blocking, mute does not alert the other account to the action.

While Musk describes himself as a free speech advocate, people believe his approach to be irresponsible. There has been an increase in hate speech and antisemitic content on the platform since the billionaire businessman took over.

The company has also been accused of not doing enough to moderate its content.

According to a Reuters report, removing or limiting the block feature might bring X into conflict with guidelines incorporated by Apple’s App Store and Google Play.

As per Apple’s guidelines, those apps that carry user-generated content must have the ability to block abusive users.

Similarly, Google Play Store also mandates apps to have an in-app system for blocking user-generated content and users.

It is possible that the app may get removed from both stores.

This is the latest decision Musk has made since taking over the site in a $44bn deal last year. Although he hasn’t declared a timeline about when the feature will be removed.

As several users opposed the idea, former Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey, seemed to agree with the decision, posting: “100%. Mute only”.