Since he took over X (formerly Twitter) in 2022, Elon Musk has taken numerous steps that reduce the safety and moderation of the social network, including letting extremist voices back online while cutting the safety team in the name of free speech.
Now, Musk appears ready to trash one of X’s few remaining safety mechanisms: the block button. The billionaire this week posted his hoped-for change that “the block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, a public post”.
Journalist James Ball noted that this is not the first time that Musk has made similar threats to reimagine the block function, suggesting it may be a false alarm. It is also worth noting that it has always been possible to view a blocked account by creating a new account and using that to view the blocked content, although this requires a bit of effort.
