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'X' changing how block function works - blocked users will be able to see your posts but not engage with them

cormack12

Gold Member
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Mr Reasonable

Completely Unreasonable
Seems a strange decision to make.

I don't know what the reason could be, but it doesn't sound like something that's been decided based on user demand.

I wonder if this is an engineering problem masquerading as some sort of feature.

I don't use twitter anymore, but if I did and had blocked people who I didn't want to deal with, this might well make the platform less attractive to me.

Or am I missing something?
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Seems a strange decision to make.

I don't know what the reason could be, but it doesn't sound like something that's been decided based on user demand.

I wonder if this is an engineering problem masquerading as some sort of feature.

I don't use twitter anymore, but if I did and had blocked people who I didn't want to deal with, this might well make the platform less attractive to me.

Or am I missing something?
How are you dealing with them with this change? You would not see them and they could not engage with your content and post in your threads. Why do you need to ensure they cannot read what you write?
 
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Saber

Member
This should be a thing since way long. This block feature gives way too much power to people to say whatever the crap they want without repercution.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
The comments in that tweet are taking care of the idiocy of the post.
Because it went viral, yes. But for every one of those, there are 1000 others that are all about neo-nazism, eugenics, some races being subhuman, etc. etc., unchallenged. Having reasonable content standards prevents a platform from becoming a degenerate cesspool. Twitter's free for all is just another one of those now.
 

Little Mac

Member
YouTube and Neogaf are the closest thing to social media I use. I have a Facebook account but it's solely for Facebook marketplace (because it pretty much killed Craigslist).

For me social media peaked with Myspace.
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
A LOT of people are fleeing X over this. People are also fleeing Threads over the engagement bait spam (it's as bad as the porn/crypto spam on X now) and their AI moderation randomly banning people for things like being on a VPN or proxy. Meta started paying highly engaging accounts like X did, so now everyone is copying & pasting stupid engagement bait and spamming it.

BlueSky got about 2M signups over the last 24 hours due to the X change. It's still not as active as X or Threads, but I found out it has one really awesome feature. If you own your own domain, you can use that domain as your @ handle on it. I like that. Apple has started letting you use your domain as your iCloud email as well (for free), I like services that let you do that.
 

ManaByte

Gold Member

This essentially accomplishes nothing except making it easier to enable harassment or annoyance from users that have been blocked. Even if they cannot interact with your posts directly, they can interact with your followers or other commenters they can now see, and also can easily screenshot your posts and post those on their page. Yes, it’s true that these users can already make alternate accounts, but this streamlines that whole process for them. People who are frequently blocked, often for good reason, are the ones who directly benefit from this.

There are two things that are happening here. The first is that there is no elaborate algorithm that hides your posts from followers consistently. Especially in my case, I can post links to my articles freely where they get more reach than the link-averse Twitter, which does not want to direct people away from the site.

But posting on Bluesky has revealed that my interactions and engagement there are not all that wildly different than on Twitter. Sometimes, in fact, they get more interaction because of A) the lack of a punishing algorithm and B) more engaged users who frequent the site more than Twitter because well, Twitter is bad now. Tweets I make that get several hundred likes on Twitter may get close or the same on Bluesky. Article links, generally, have gotten more likes and comments.
 

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
I don't care about this change in the slightest, it's really much ado about nothing as far as I'm concerned. I think some of the other changes are far more meaningful like the check system where anyone can have a blue check and the wild west format.

I've debated whether or not truly allowing everything on a platform is good, and I decided pretty strongly that it isn't. The hardcore free speech people I think are blinded by their desire to "own the libs" but all platforms censor some stuff. Even Twitter. Illegal content for example. If I ran it, I'd allow a lot of stuff, but really vulgar stuff just meant to drive hate... those accounts would be gone. They bring nothing to the platform and only detract from it. But Elon unfortunately has been completely consumed by the culture war, and he's said before on there that he's made it his life's mission to destroy leftism(whatever that means) because it stole his kid away from him.

But this specific change I really think is small potatoes and I can even think of some benefits. Just me personally, I was blocked by a sports news account years ago that whenever they post breaking news, I can't see it. Now I'll be able to see it. Those people are the biggest winners in all of this. I always see people in my feed going "Damn... can anyone screenshot me what ____ account just posted? They have me blocked." No longer! (They could've just clicked the log out button, but I guess that's too much effort.
 
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DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
I'll say the same thing that I say when Threads was born and people said Twitter is done and I said not a chance.

People go to Twitter for news. That's the main reason people signed up. It's why I signed up. To get breaking sports, global, and gaming news on the immediate. People don't go to Twitter to share photos about their day(that'll always be IG), people don't go there to vlog random shit(that will be Tiktok and Youtube).

Twitter has established itself as the news mecca. And even if some news accounts co-post on other platforms, no one will go to those platforms to get news. No one goes to Threads for news. They go there as a "Twitter alternative" that isn't filled with hate accounts or whatever. But they realize in short order that people don't really use Twitter to chat per se. The chat piggybacks off the desire to read and react to news. They use it to get their fill of news, and because of social media and modern tech, all of our brains have been re-wired to need news every hour of everyday. Some people every minute. Ever have a vacation day without your phone? When you finally get home and get back to it, you have that feeling of anxiety like you left your kids in the backseat of a hot car. Other platforms don't give you this fix. They may be more warm and welcoming to chat, but if you want to chat you'll just use chat apps or Facebook.

As long as Twitter is where everyone goes for news, it will remain the go-to for most. And it's why even people who started using other platforms still go to Twitter for news, they just may not actually post there as much or anymore.
 
Because it went viral, yes. But for every one of those, there are 1000 others that are all about neo-nazism, eugenics, some races being subhuman, etc. etc., unchallenged. Having reasonable content standards prevents a platform from becoming a degenerate cesspool. Twitter's free for all is just another one of those now.
So far you or anyone else who knows, how does that differ from BlueSky? How does their moderation work, and what are the limits of their allowed speech? What transparency do they have when it comes to which topics or opinions are not allowed?

And as far as twitter goes, what ever happened to "not freedom of reach?" How are tweets like that able to go viral in the first place? Musk has been so disappointing in so many ways when it comes to his ownership of Twitter.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Users who like blocking people will be pissed.

Even though the blocked user cant post, they can still see, laugh and cut/paste snippets of the user's tweets making fun of them on their own social media posts.

Love it.
 

AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
Letting people you block see your content is like rubbing salt in the wound. But I don’t want to see content I block. I need to keep the hoes out.
 

Irobot82

Member
Because it went viral, yes. But for every one of those, there are 1000 others that are all about neo-nazism, eugenics, some races being subhuman, etc. etc., unchallenged. Having reasonable content standards prevents a platform from becoming a degenerate cesspool. Twitter's free for all is just another one of those now.
Right, but how's that any different from the 1000's of Fuck Capitalism, Kill white people, nutty left shit that goes unchecked not only on X but on all the other social media platforms? Is it free speech is ok when it's lefty nutty shit? Lefty and Righty nutty shit, or none ever at all allowed and who gets to decide what is allowed and what isn't?
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
Right, but how's that any different from the 1000's of Fuck Capitalism, Kill white people, nutty left shit that goes unchecked not only on X but on all the other social media platforms? Is it free speech is ok when it's lefty nutty shit? Lefty and Righty nutty shit, or none ever at all allowed and who gets to decide what is allowed and what isn't?

Are you seriously trying to justify this?

 

ReBurn

Gold Member
I wonder if they can change it so that every post doesn't fill up with thots pimping their onlyfans. I quit reading X because it was everywhere.
 

Irobot82

Member
Are you seriously trying to justify this?


Pretty clearly not. The point was that people act like nothing bad ever happened when bad shit happened all the time of social media, it was just bad shit slanted left. They both are awful. The way I see things, X allows dumb shit on the left and right, everyone else allows dumb shit on only the left.
 
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Hugare

Member
Seems a strange decision to make.

I don't know what the reason could be, but it doesn't sound like something that's been decided based on user demand.

I wonder if this is an engineering problem masquerading as some sort of feature.

I don't use twitter anymore, but if I did and had blocked people who I didn't want to deal with, this might well make the platform less attractive to me.

Or am I missing something?
Most likely reason: Elon got curious after being blocked by some person

The sad thing it, it's probably true. He is just like that.

Dont think its an engineering problem since this has been a feature since, well, ever.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Are you seriously trying to justify this?


the biggest problem i have with this is that the algorithm promoted this. Yes, twitter, facebook and most social media will have posts like this but this one went viral because the algorithm decided more people should see trash like this.
 
the biggest problem i have with this is that the algorithm promoted this. Yes, twitter, facebook and most social media will have posts like this but this one went viral because the algorithm decided more people should see trash like this.
Well said. The other thing is twitter should create a system that allows them to cancel the payment on any viral tweet like this that seems intended to troll people and farm engagement through outrage. Free speech doesn't have to be paid speech.

And like I said, what happened to "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach?"
 

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
how about this.

They won't be able to respond to them so they can't harass them directly. They could take screenshots of their stuff now and tell their followers to harass that person, but they could have done that anyway by logging out, taking the screenshots, logging back in. Or using a burner.

I just really don't see the downside here that everyone else sees. I stand by the check mark changes being far more detrimental and obviously the general "everything goes" approach to Twitter. This change is nothing IMO.
 

EverydayBeast

ChatGPT 0.1
Twitter evolved to X it allows news to develop faster, it’s way more advanced than whatever “MySpace” was, sure it isn’t perfect.
 
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