X will remove blocking feature, says Elon Musk

Elon Musk, owner and chief executive officer of X (formerly known as Twitter), says users will no longer be able to block other accounts.

In a post shared via the platform on Friday, the billionaire businessman said the feature made “no sense” and will soon be unavailable for users.

He, however, said the block feature will remain for direct messages.

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

“It makes no sense.”

Block is going to be deleted as a “feature”, except for DMs

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 18, 2023

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On its help page, X describes block as “a feature that helps you control how you interact with other accounts.”

The block feature helps people in restricting specific accounts from contacting them, seeing their posts, and following them.

Musk said users can instead use the “mute” feature as an alternative to blocking.

You will still be able to mute accounts and block users for DMs

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 18, 2023

The mute option means the user who does the muting cannot see the other account’s posts on their timeline.

However, it does not prohibit the muted user from following and replying the content of the one who muted them.

Since Musk took over the microblogging platform, Twitter has introduced several features and changes.

In 2022, the firm came up with a subscription package for the verified blue tick mark.

In April 2023, Musk introduced a feature that allows media publishers to charge users on per article basis.

This followed the announcement that Twitter users will be able to monetise their content, including long-form text and hours-long videos.

Providing updates later in May, the Twitter CEO said the platform would take a 10 percent cut on content subscriptions after the first year.