But he’ll still have a block button. He’s a real Republican now.
People need to get the fuck off twitter.
Meanwhile, everybody will continue to refuse to leave the platform, further showing Elon that there is no price too high for people.
Sacre bleu! It’s almost like the free speech warrior does not know that the other aspect of free speech besides speaking freely is being able to choose whom to listen to! Does he think free speech means being forced to listen to specific people speak?
Surprised. Pikachu. Face.
But I need that to block the 15 bots that follow me each day
Remember to contact your political representative and express your concerns on any public organization account having an account on twitter. Also contact any journali of a media you use to read/watch and express the same concern.
Once politics and journalists get out of twitter is game over.
At this point if you’re still on Shitter you kinda deserve whatever you get
I agree that X is enemy territory now, but in a world where billionaires can buy up all the major means of communication, it doesn’t feel like enough to just close up our accounts and move on. They can follow us wherever our accounts go and buy platforms out from under us. Lemmy and Mastodon are slightly better as open decentralized platforms, but they still could be attacked by Musk if he had the initiative to.
I’m saying it now: Get an amateur radio license and pay ARRL dues. We’re going to need to protect that bandwidth.
Pretty sure he’s doing this simply because he doesn’t like how many people have blocked him personally
Taylor Swift blocked him and he can’t have that
He’s grumpy that she won’t see any additional jokes he makes about impregnating her
As much as I despise Musk and Twitter and hope that both die a painful death, what is actually proposed here is honestly a change for the better: It’s not about preventing people from blocking users, it’s about blocked users being able to see public posts, which they could also see by just logging out. This is being honest about what a block does and avoids giving people a wrong sense of privacy that they simply don’t have on the platform. From what I’ve heard there is a possibility to post for followers-only which in combination with requiring approval to follow and that isn’t going away here either…
Twitter massively reduced visibility for logged-out users, so just logging out doesn’t help, you have to log into a different account. This additional fraction reduces the amount of harassment a lot. Not sure that being “more honest” is worth the price, especially when an info box could achieve the same without making harassment easier.
Twitter massively reduced visibility for logged-out users,
I know, but it still didn’t fully remove it.
Not sure that being “more honest” is worth the price
The thing is that there really is no price, nor was there ever one. Your suggestion that you think there is demonstrates that the way blocking worked gave people dangerously wrong ideas. It’s about being clear to people what they can and cannot expect. Anything else is ACTUALLY dangerous.
I know, but it still didn’t fully remove it.
Sure, but it doesn’t have to be fully removed to have an effect.
The thing is that there really is no price, nor was there ever one. Your suggestion that you think there is demonstrates that the way blocking worked gave people dangerously wrong ideas.
Sorry, but you don’t get to redefine how humans work. There is a price, because friction reduces the likelihood of people following through. Removing that friction increases the likelihood of people following through. You might not want to believe this to be the case, but please read studies on the topic - it’s just how humans work. You don’t get to dismiss negative effects because you don’t believe in them.
The argument here is literally about stalkers. Not about random uninterested people that don’t care.
No, it’s not just about stalkers, it’s about harassment in general. But even if it were, even stalkers are still people and don’t work fundamentally different.
Feel free to show any research proving me wrong, but unless you find any, the reasonable position is “humans work the same on this topic as on others”.
Wearing a seatbelt in a moving vehicle does not magically prevent all deaths upon an accident. Do you recommend we should stop wearing seatbelts?
If there are measures in place that reduce the danger of something happening, it’s not wise to remove them just because they’re not 100% effective.
I’m not advocating against a seatbelt, I’m advocating against not wearing it, “because I am confident that I can hold on to something in case of a collision” or similar stupid reasons. Expecting that blocking does anything to hide public posts that you can simply open in another browser (or in the same browser in private browsing mode) is not a seatbelt, it is the equivalent of a slightly stronger handle on top of the car window that is being advertized as a feature to protect you in case of an accident.
This change first and foremost makes it clear that that handle does nothing meaningful and that you should wear an actual seatbelt (follower-only posts, ideally with restricted followers) instead, if you are worried about a collision. Twitter is a public forum. You can’t tell people to leave you alone, shout with a megaphone across the marketplace and then be annoyed when they hear you. If you don’t want them to hear you, don’t use a megaphone.
Nah, bullshit. This is 100% Musk’s fragile ego getting upset that people blocked him. He wants to be able to force his and his evil friends’ opinions into the faces of people who don’t want to see it.
Please read again what he changed and then try to figure out why your rationale is clearly not what this is about.
The delete account button is still there.
It’s a win for humanity if it causes more people to leave and stop thinking it’s a public forum.
It IS a public forum though. The whole point of it, even dating back to it’s inception, was very very public conversation. It was in stark contrast to facebook, which claimed to be privacy driven. As opposed to the mostly public myspace, and the completely public twitter.
Since Musk took it, it’s more like an arena where the loudest and dumbest have the microphones. It is neither a haven for free speech nor a forum where legitimate discourse takes place. It has become the trash pit of the internet.
That’s not what was said though. I was saying that it was a PUBLIC forum. I’m not stating WHAT is being said. Merely that it’s being said in a public way.
I don’t think I would agree that just because something is public that it’s a public forum. I feel like the public has to own it as well. I looked it up and maybe it’s because I predate social media by rather a lot, but I think of it in the classical sense:
Public forums are typically categorized into three types:
- Traditional Public Forums: Long-established spaces like parks or sidewalks, where people have historically exercised their rights to free speech and assembly.
- Designated Public Forums: Areas that the government intentionally opens up for public expression, such as town halls or school meeting rooms.
- Limited Public Forums: Spaces opened for specific types of discussions or activities but with certain restrictions on the subject matter or participants.
The important factor being public ownership of the forum. I will concede that it has colloquially come to include public social media, but I think it’s important to distinguish that it’s not really the same thing at all as has been discussed through most of our history.
Food for thought. I just think calling them public forums attaches too much importance to a profit seeking endeavor.
Exactly. You were much more articulate than I, with my comparison, but it was effectively the point I was trying to make — it’s not a public forum at all and it’s now overrun by a cesspool of nonsensical garbage.
City council meetings are public meetings. But if you go in there and start swearing your head off and using the N-word you will be removed because you are distupting the ability of rational people to have a discussion.
Twitter has decided to let these freaks scream their heads off. This disrupting its ability to be used as a public forum. It is no longer a public forum. It’s just 4Chan now. Sane people wanting to have discussions don’t use 4Chan.
If the block feature goes away, I guarantee it will come back for - at the very least - the highest tier of paid accounts almost immediately afterwards.
I can’t imagine any of the large corps that still use Xitter for customer communication will be happy not being able to block serial trolls. Or people with legitimate grievances who won’t go away.
Hopefully when Musk does this it will convince my addicted friends to drop the platform when their stalkers can all suddenly contact them again.
Or maybe it’ll get the EU to ban the platform like Brazil did.
the block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, a public post
Could be worse. I never liked the idea of blocking “hiding” your content from other people to begin with. It makes it too easy to give trolls the confirmation they succeeded in getting under your skin, encouraging them to make another account to continue harassing their victim.
I’m pretty sure both the App Store and the Google Play Store both require social media apps to have a block feature. Will be interesting to see what happens if he goes through with this.
Absolutely nothing. Rules on those stores are only for the little guys
He backed down when Brazil blocked him. If Apple and Google decided to threaten to delist Twitter, he’ll back down.
You can always count on this twat to do the dumbest, shittiest thing he can.
When I comment that Twitter is trash and I’d never use it, the response I often get is ‘it’s actually pretty good after you block all the trolls and bots and corporate accounts and politicians and blue checks’… 🙄
Before the musk acquisition I had something like 8,000 people blocked… mostly the inane shit like “Patriot Christian Dog Mom” or incredible douchebags like “dc_draino”.
