Twitter CEO Eon Musk disclosed on Friday that the block feature that’s used to restrict followers will be going away.
“Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” Elon Musk wrote.
“Makes no sense.” He said in response to a Tesla fan account who asked if there was any reason to use block instead of mute.
Many users view blocking as a safety feature, therefore when it was suggested that it would be replaced by the service’s old verification feature, there was criticism from worried users.
Twitter states on its help page that it “gives people a variety of tools to control their experience, including blocking.”
Although Mute may still exist, the features have changed. Block restricts fellow users from interacting with, viewing and following an account while mute simply hides your posts from their timeline. Users are not made aware that they have been muted. The block feature will still be available for direct communications, says Musk.
The influx of spam comments and handles on timelines have made blocking has become an increasingly important feature for many users.
Prior to the backlash, some users started blocking X Blue/Twitter Premium accounts because the feature started giving their responses priority over those of free users. The function has also been used by many well-known people to delete harassment from their news feed.
It’s not known when the block feature will be removed from the microblogging platform.
