Interestingly twitter’s “block” function did originally just mute people. I remember being blocked in around 2010 and it didn’t stop you following or reading their tweets. At first I was confused when people started requesting the true block functionality - what’s the point when tweets are publicly available to logged out users?
When you’ve never been harassed, like me or Musk or twitter’s original engineers, you don’t immediately understand that allowing (muted) interaction feeds the harassment and can still spread it around into a pile-on by non muted users.
Luckily most people get it now, but it looks like Musk wants to turn the clock back on it.
Interestingly twitter’s “block” function did originally just mute people. I remember being blocked in around 2010 and it didn’t stop you following or reading their tweets. At first I was confused when people started requesting the true block functionality - what’s the point when tweets are publicly available to logged out users?
When you’ve never been harassed, like me or Musk or twitter’s original engineers, you don’t immediately understand that allowing (muted) interaction feeds the harassment and can still spread it around into a pile-on by non muted users.
Luckily most people get it now, but it looks like Musk wants to turn the clock back on it.