Yes, In Theory, Elon Could Be Cooking Up Something Better Than Blocks, But In Reality…

You might have heard late last week or over the weekend, that Elon was getting rid of the block" feature on exTwitter. Elon had tweeted on Friday claiming Block is going to be deleted as a feature", except for DMs."

But, uh, he had said basically the same thing back in June. I know this because I wrote about it back then. For whatever reason, the mainstream media finally picked up on it this weekend and there were dozens of news stories all about how Elon was going to get rid of the block feature. For his part, Elon loved every minute of it, agreeing with a user who pointed out he was getting free publicity for it:

Amusingly, the Community Notes program, which Elon loves, pointed out that both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store say that social media apps are required to have a block function, suggesting that if he did actually get rid of block, he might run into a spot of trouble.

Apple's developer guidelines note that any service that hosts user-generated content is required to include the ability to block abusive users from the service," but I'm not sure that applies here. From the context, it looks like it applies only to the ability of the service provider to block users, not other users. The Google Play guidelines are more direct and say that you need to provide an in-app system for blocking UGC and users," so he might run into trouble there.

That said, it was also amusing that when a Musk stan highlighted the Community Note again as a way of showing how great Elon was that he'd even allow Community Notes to be used to correct him, Musk responded by claiming that the Community Note was wrong and had already been voted to get taken off his tweet. But not only did that not appear to be the case (the note is still there as I type this), a new note now appeared on Elon's response claiming that the old note was gone. It's going inception style at this point:

Anyway, even some of Musk's biggest fans aren't happy about this. I mean, this account (who has been whining about Musk a lot lately, even though he used to be a stan):

And then there's this guy, who Musk regularly retweets and responds to:

Even Fox News highlighted how a bunch of Musk's biggest fans on the platform are pretty pissed off about this whole idea.

When yet another culture war grifter whined to Musk about it, Musk promised that exTwitter was actually working on something better" instead of blocks:

exTwitter pretend CEO Linda Yaccarino got in on the act as well responding to, of all people, Monica Lewinsky's concerns about the removal of the block feature." Yaccarino also claims that the company is working on something better."

So... here's the question: could Elon and exTwitter come up with a better solution for dealing with extreme harassment, stalkers, etc. than the traditional block" feature? I might surprise people by saying it's possible. But it seems extremely unlikely.

The positive case for Musk here though, is that social media is constantly changing. Contrary to what the media and politicians will tell you, social media is not set in stone and is incredibly dynamic, where things change all the time, and trends can take off in ways that no one expected.

So, it's theoretically possible that there's a better option that the brute force block" feature.

And, maybe Elon could figure out what it is.

But... I find that highly unlikely. In other tweets, Elon has suggested that muting is a better option than blocks anyway. When Jack Dorsey responded to Elon's tweet about getting rid of blocks, agreeing with it and saying mute only," Elon responded Jack understands."

So, if the something better" is built around... enhanced mute over block, then I am extremely skeptical that it will actually be better. Mute and block serve two different functions. There can be some overlap in that Venn diagram, but thinking that one totally outweighs the other is... kinda clueless.

One constant that has been shown throughout his time as Supreme Leader of exTwitter is that Elon has neither the deep knowledge, nor the curiosity, to understand the lived experience of anyone else on exTwitter. To use some language he might understand, in Elon's world, everyone else is an NPC, and thus stalking, harassment, etc., don't much matter when they happen between NPCs. The only time anything matters is when the problem impacts himself directly.

And, building out strong trust & safety tooling takes an astounding level of empathy. And Elon has never shown himself to be empathetic to anyone else's lived experience.

So, look, I'm wiling to keep an open mind. Maybe there is a tool/feature that is better than blocking. It would be nice if there were, because blocking itself does work in some cases, but in plenty of others perhaps better tools could make a real difference.

It's just that you'll have to forgive me when I say it's difficult to believe that Elon or his team of mercenaries are the ones likely to figure it out.