Did you know that when someone blocks you on X (formerly Twitter), they can still reply to your posts? This opens up the possibility of abuse, with someone blocking you and then slandering, impersonating, or otherwise abusing you on the very same platform without you seeing it.
Now, X is changing the way blocking works. On Thursday, the company’s Engineering account explained the changes as follows: “If a user who has blocked you replies to one of your posts, you will now be able to see their reply. This change enables you to identify and report any potential bad content that you previously could not view, safeguarding both your account and the overall integrity of our platform.”
X owner Elon Musk previously said the block functionality on X “makes no sense,” and that it’s going to be “deleted as a ‘feature’ except for DMs.” While that hasn’t happened yet, it appears that X is working towards changing the block feature until it’s more in line with Musk’s idea of the platform functioning as a “public town square.”
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“Our goal is to allow users to control their experience while maintaining the public visibility of posts,” the post from X’s Engineering team added.
An unresolved issue remains: Reporting abuse on X doesn’t seem to do much. I’ve reported numerous scam accounts over the past couple of months, and they seem to just keep on appearing. The company’s strategy of charging users for the “verified” blue checkmark hasn’t done much to fix the problem, either.