Elon Musk risks privacy backlash by permitting accounts you’ve blocked on X to see your posts

If you’ve decided to stick with X after Elon Musk took over Twitter and started to systematically destroy anything good that was left there (which, admittedly was not much) you’ve probably made extensive use of the Block function to filter out some of the crap that flows through the social media sewer. Now the value of blocking is about to be diminished.

Musk has confirmed that the functionality of the block button is changing. The change means that while an account you have blocked will not be able to interact with you or your posts, they will be able to see any posts that you’ve written. It’s an idea that has already been met with criticism, with many voicing concerns about privacy implications.

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If all of this sounds a little familiar, there is a good reason for that. A number of years back, Twitter implemented much the same change -- but it was very short-lived because of an outcry from users that forced the company to reverse the change.

The decision by X to implement a (very slightly) watered down version of the controversial change was spotted by “independent app researcher” Nima Owji, and then confirmed by Elon Musk:

While it was previously possible to simply use Incognito mode to access the posts of a user who had blocked you, this was not something everyone knew about, and not a step a huge number of people were willing to take terribly often.

With there being myriad reasons to not want a particular account to be able to view your posts -- harassment, abuse, privacy, security -- anything that chips away at barriers that can be put in place (however minimal those barriers may be) is unlikely to be well-received. This is evident in the responses to the posts that highlights the change where a large number of respondents plead for the change not to be implemented.

One user describes it as a “terrible, terrible idea”, another saying that “If I block someone because they’re threatening me I would prefer if they can’t see my movements post-block”. Others point out that women are among those who will be negatively affected by the blocking change:

It may not previously have been possible to completely eliminate stalking, abuse and harassment, but the previous functionality of blocking offered up some peace of mind. In order to maintain privacy and security moving forward, those with concerns about who can see what they post will have to use private, or make sure that posts are limited to followers only. Making privacy and security opt-in in this way seems foolhardy to say the least.

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