Elon Musk to limit ‘block’ function on his social media platform

Elon Musk said Friday that the block function will be greatly limited on X, formerly known as Twitter, stripping the social media platform of a feature long seen a protection against harassment.

Musk said in multiple tweets that the block function “makes no sense” and that it will be “deleted as a ‘feature,’ except for DMs.” He was responding to a tweet by Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, an account representing a club of Tesla owners, which asked whether there was difference between blocking and muting.

It’s unclear when the change would take effect.

The company did not immediately comment.

Blocking a user on the platform prevents that user from interacting with an account – such as seeing a user’s tweets or addressing them directly. The blocked user knows they have been blocked. Muting an account, meanwhile, prevents a user from seeing the account’s posts. Muted accounts do not know someone has muted them.

Some users of Musk’s platform said limiting the block function would lead to more harassment on a platform that already struggles to contain abuse.

“The removal of the block function would effectively make harassment an official feature of Twitter/X, taking away what is the only setting that can reduce impact,” Tanja Bueltmann, a historian at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, tweeted on Friday. “It is an extremely ignorant and privileged perspective to think that blocking makes no sense.”

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland tweeted that it uses the block feature to limit antisemitic replies on tweets commemorating victims of the concentration camp.

“A platform that disregards the need to defend the memory of the victims demonstrates a disregard for creating a respectful and empathetic online environment,” the memorial wrote on Friday.

Such a change would represent the latest example of how Musk has transformed the platform that he bought for $44 billion in October, including dismantling measures aimed at user safety. Shortly after taking over the platform, Musk restored many previously banned accounts, including that of former president Donald Trump. He has also slashed trust and safety staffing, and dissolved a council that for years sought to make the social network safer and more civil.

Those changes were accompanied by a spike in online harassment, including toward ethnic and religious minorities outside the United States. In March, a Washington Post analysis found that the platform boosted hate speech via its recommendation page.

Last month, Musk rebranded the company X, with the vision of making into an “everything app.”