Since taking over Twitter, Elon Musk has reigned as a tyrant over the app’s policies. He’s changed a variety of harmless features, like the app’s name, but the more pressing matters of his tyranny are the restrictions to privacy and free speech.
Musk’s newest debacle: altering the features of the block button.
On any social media platform, the “block” button is a handy device. It means that if a user is bothering you or making you uncomfortable, you can click one button and never have to see their posts, comments, or profile again. It also removes that user’s access to your content. It’s a quick fix with none of the communication complications we face in the real world. Out of sight, out of mind.
So, imagine my surprise when I see that Elon Musk is attempting to remove this ability from Twit—I mean, X.
As an active Twitter (I’m not calling it X) user, this doesn’t make any sense to me. There’s a block button for a reason, Elon. Why are you trying to take that away?
“The block function will block [an] account from engaging with, but not block seeing, public post,” Musk said in a tweet.
So the block button isn’t being removed, but it’s being severely changed.
We’ve all blocked someone—or multiple someones—in our lives; we do this to remove the person completely from our online experience. Allowing the blocked person to see your content completely misses the point. Why would I want someone I blocked to still see my tweets? I don’t. You don’t. No one does.
As for his reasoning, Musk said the block button “makes no sense.” On X, there is a muting feature that allows you to remove a user from your own feed, but this does not prohibit them from seeing your posts as well. It is nowhere near the same as the blocking feature, but to Musk, it is a worthy substitute.
Before Musk took over Twitter, he used the block button quite frequently. So, what changed? He blocked others to stop his own harassment, but now other users being harassed cannot do the same? His reasoning behind the removal is consistently contradictory.
What makes this situation more amusing is the fact that what Musk is attempting to do is against app store policies. Under the user-generated content section of the Apple App Store Agreement, it states that social-networking services must include, for account holders, “the ability to block abusive users from the service.” Block, not “stop them from engaging.”
The blockage of “abusive” users is a necessity to privacy. It is not only a safety feature—in severe cases, there can be a threat of stalking or harassment—but also a matter of individual choice. As a social media user, you have the ability to cultivate your following. Blocking someone who bothers you or makes you uncomfortable from seeing your posts is a basic human right.
Though, there is, of course, a qualification.
For elected government officials, being able to block users is considered a violation of free speech. The line drawn here is messy, especially when it begs for questions of that individual’s safety, but, in the biggest context, blocking when you hold positions of authority is a big no-no.
A lot of people learned of this caveat to Twitter blocking when former President Donald Trump blocked countless accounts in 2019 because they criticized his opinions. In this court case, Judge Barrington D. Parker ruled, “The First Amendment prohibits an official who uses a social media account for government purposes from excluding people from an ‘otherwise open online dialogue’ because they say things that the official finds objectionable.”
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Since Musk bought Twitter and made it into X (… still not calling it that), there have been a boatload of issues on the app that venture too close to violating our First Amendment rights. Two years ago, he banned a number of popular journalists from the app because of a “doxing policy” that had little to do with what they were actually speaking about—which, therefore, is a limitation to free press. Musk has also removed the feature of adding pronouns to profiles, which can be argued as a removal of the right of expression.
For someone who claims to love free speech so much that he tweeted he hopes that “even [his] worst critics remain on Twitter because that’s what free speech means,” he is not doing a very good job at following through. Combined with the block button’s removal of privacy and jeopardizing First Amendment freedoms, Musk seems to be entirely contradicting these assertions.
The enjoyment of Twitter is being prohibited by Musk’s tyrannical rule. While a major service of the app is for politics, the limitation of free speech is something far from our First Amendment.
