Elon Musk's X rolls out controversial change to the block feature, here's what it means for users

X block feature

Last month, social media platform X had revealed a big change coming to the block function. Now, X has announced that the functionality is being rolled out to all users. If any user on X has his/her posts set to public, then accounts that they have blocked will be able to see them. However, the blocked accounts will not be able to “engage” — that is they won’t be able to like, reply or repost the user’s posts.

As of now, if any user has blocked others, then the message “You are blocked” pops up. Furthermore, the blocked user cannot see any replies, followers or the following list. However, all that is set to change now.

In September, Elon Musk had announced that “high time” the block function was changed. “The block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, public post,” Musk had said in a post on X.

The engineering team at X believes that it is being done for “greater transparency”. “Today, block can be used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked. Users will be able to see if such behavior occurs with this update, allowing for greater transparency,” the engineering team said in October explaining the rationale behind the move.

While X is rolling out the big change, it might run into some trouble with Apple and Google. Both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store have strict guidelines for apps like X. For instance, Apple’s guidelines make it clear that apps with user-generated content — such as X — should have the ability to block abusive users from the service.

Similarly, Google also makes it clear that apps like X “that enable 1:1 user interaction with specific users (for example, direct messaging, tagging, mentioning, etc.) must provide an in-app functionality for blocking users.”