Elon Musk Removes Ability to Stop Others From Viewing X Platform Content

Elon Musk, the owner of the popular microblogging platform X (formerly Twitter), has announced that the ability to block people on Twitter will be removed from the feature in the future because he believes it “doesn’t make any sense.”

“Block will be removed as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” wrote Elon Musk on X. Musk’s statement came after the post questioned the intent of blocking someone from X instead of just muting them.

Mute and block are different functions in X. Mute prevents you from seeing certain users’ content, while blocking prevents others from seeing your content, following you, or interacting with you.

The X owner also mentioned that muting will be the only way to control X’s content in the future, but the blocking will remain for direct messages. Unblocking could allow spammers and harassers to interact with those who would have blocked them because the muting is less strict.

When you mute an account, they can still follow you and interact with your content. You won’t see their replies unless others reply to them.

Musk recently said he would soon take action on shadow banning accounts on his platform. Musk also apologized for the delay in implementing changes to end Shadowbanning. Shadowband means being blocked or muted from a social media platform without notice.

“Sorry it took so long. “There are so many layers of trust and security software that it often takes us hours to figure out who, how and why an account has been suspended or blocked,” the tech billionaire wrote.

After buying Twitter (now X) in October last year, Musk had tried to prove that shadowbanning was a common practice on the social network, sharing information with the public at regular intervals.

Musk said future changes to Twitter’s platform would identify whether someone has been “shadow banned” as well as what they could do to remedy the situation.