Twitter/X removing the block feature

Can we just pretend that Twitter no longer exists?
All that Elon Musk still tries here is how far he has to go until Twitter finally collapses.
- Also, can we stop polluting the tech comms with this crap? Why are people posting this stuff here again? We were perfectly fine for awhile with no musk Twitter shit posts.
  
  Just block it. Wait, no, that "feature" makes no sense.
  Non-shitpost: I know everyone is annoyed by now, but Ex-Twitter is a huge website and relevant?
  
  Not to be an idiot - but where should people post this stuff? I mean, I do find it interesting occasionally, and like to see what other's think, not so much complaining that it was posted at all.
  
  Twitter is a tech company like it or not.
  
  It's gotten to the point where I've even blocked the communities that are supposed to be making light of the fact that there's too much musk spam.. because I'm tired of all the musk spam...
  Hrs irrelevant and nobody can change my mind. He can fuck right off idc.
  
  The Comnect android app has a keyeord filter. Would seem easy enough to just put 'musk' inthere and unless you have an interest in muskies, muskrats, or some men's cologne lines it would filter things pretty cleanly.
- YES PLEASE. I fucking swear it genuinely feels like about 15% of the posts here are about Elon.
  People need to ignore this prick and move on with their lives
  
  I love Elon though! He is so smart with business!!🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅
- Twitter. stopped existing a long time ago, when it was bought out and gutted. It's the gathering place of fascists now.
- Not for as long as it's relevant to hundreds of millions of people.
  But I would agree that "Elon says he's going to do it" is not much of news until it actually happens.
- I’m ok with drawing attention to this stuff. Every time more Twitter shit hits the news, Fediverse apps get another boost of users.
- I down vote any post on here that mentions X, Twitter, or Elon, usually without even reading them. I made an exception to post this reply, but did down vote the OP.
  
  I upvoted this post and then out of respect downvoted it.

- I’d love to know who actually has this honor - I would guess Trump myself, but Elmu is a good guess too
- He'll just ban the account instead, now. Maybe even say that it would be a block, but "that makes no sense".
- #Everyone must listen to me!

Literally every single day we have idiots doing Musk's PR work for free.
Downvote Musk spam. The billionaire doesn't need your help making sure his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle.
- You think being inevitably forced to see every bit of harassment and spam is going to make that platform more popular and financially viable? Nah, if anything this is free advertising for Mastodon.
  
  How does mastodon work compared to twitter? I keep hearing about it but I'm still trying to figure out lemmy.
- Yeah, but every time these stories blow up, Mastodon, Threads, and BlueSky gets another user base boost. I’m ok with that. These stories keep making the alternative communities more and more viable.
- I agree, he seems unwell and the attention is continuing the negative spiral. Unfortunately, I don't think we can control what people are interested in. This is a total spectacle and media circus

What in the actual fuck does he think is going to happen
- I have him blocked. It's my fault. He noticed and now he is going to axe the whole feature
  
  I could actually seeing that being the reason he’s doing this. Nothing a narcissist hates more than people ignoring them.
  
  Damn it, uwe. This is why we can't have nice things.
- Probably gets hourly updates on followers, blockers, views etc.
- He's going to be able to harass everyone that had blocked him.
  
  I bet he will still be able to block users without them knowing too
  
  Next, deleting your account gets axed. Feature makes no sense.
- He wants shitbag, astroturf, conservative, fascist “personalities” to be able to respond to and every prominent non-fascist post where they can be promoted to the top of the replies.
  As a bonus, it will also help the astroturfing oil companies better kill environmental efforts.
- Maybe he wants to get rid off the somewhat smart people on Twitter so the rest can be easily radicalized with the intend that they vote against their interest and for the interests of rich people?
  I'd say it's either that or he wants greater reach to feed his narcism.

So... Wait.
This means someone can just @ someone else and destroy their feed with hate or dick pics or whatever?!
- Mr. "assassination coordinates" said he was going to live stream driving to Zucks house to fight him, which would effectively doxx Zuck. Expecting logical consistency is silly.
  
  He's started asking for driver's licenses now so maybe he's gonna dox people
- Sounds like people should start setting up nasty ass porn bots and have them spam Musk constantly
  
  Ooooooh I've been looking for a self hosted project like that
- What I suspect will happen is that Musk cronies will be free to harass anyone they want, but anyone harassing Musk or one of this cronies will be banned.
- Yep, I think so. And “someone else” includes Elon.
  Do with that information what you will :D
- Yes, that's the goal.
- How does mute work?
  
  Blue checks will complain about it, then want a feature to get around that.
  
  what's the difference between block and mute? Block just lets them not see your feed and notifies them of this, but mute just hides anything they post from you?
  
  If you mute someone, you don't see their posts. They don't get any notification that you have muted them. It's the same as blocking but they don't know they are blocked.
- Even better they can spam literal child porn at you because of "outrage" and youll get a exec from Twitter defending you to parliament!

"it makes no sense" literally every social media site in existence has the block feature, and the reason is to help people prevent harassment. Elon is like a fucking toddler, it's obvious he just wants to get rid of blocking because he's pissy about being blocked by other people.

The block "feature" is a required tool for being listed on the Google and Apple stores, among others.
Removing it will get Twitter delisted from them as well.
- That'd be nice if it actually applied, but Apple has already made exceptions for X among other large companies to allow them to play by different rules in the store. So I'm not holding my breath for any sort of punishment.
  Examples:
  X got a one letter App Store name that was previously against the rules (other devs need their app name to be at least 2 characters) (more info)
  YouTube had been blocking iOS PiP background playback (not sure if they still do) and put that feature behind the YouTube Premium subscription. Background playback and PiP is part of iOS's system capabilities and the rule specifically says it's not allowed. See Apple's guidelines section 3.2.2 (ii) here. With this, one could make the argument that PiP would only support system supported video decoding, and YouTube uses DASH for higher resolution videos, but YouTube does offer video and audio streams that are natively supported by Apple as well so I don't hold much support for this argument.
  
  “Background playback” is behind the premium paywall; NOBODY gets YouTube PIP support on iOS; such a shame.
  I repeat, even if you pay for premium you simply can’t do PIP using the official app. You can however use a browser and use PIP that way I think (there used to be some weird workaround but I’m not sure if it still exists).
  Edit: I was (happily) wrong! I see now, they added it halfway though 2022 and I needed to go into settings and explicitly enable it. I’m a happy camper now! Thanks for the correction

Just stop using Twitter. It's easy.
- I feel sympathy for the people who are required to use it for work. Most users could quit it and replace it with Mastodon, though.
  
  I tried deleting my twitter just now.
  The website is abysmally slow. I genuinely think they are throttling their deactivate account page to try stop users from leaving en masse.
  That or else the site is not functioning correctly after Musk's optimizations'
  
  Honestly, this is a pretty clear case where federation should win out. I answered someone above, but governments using a private service like twitter for actual public announcements imo is broken. I hope that Mastodon and federated services take off and turn into a turnkey style service somewhere. Like, setting up your own Mastodon (or Lemmy!) instance I hope turns into something just about as easy as setting up an email account.
  
  With Twitter's dwindling user base and each, people should just jump ship and migrate to mastodon. It's honestly what Twitter used to be and better than everything Twitter is now nor what musk has turned Twitter into.
- What's Twitter?
- you could also say, just block it
  
  It would be a godsend if there was a way to block certain results from search engines. I do not want to have want to have any more Twitter links or reddit links propagating my results. I don't even care if I miss out on some vital piece of information to my query. I just don't want those sites in my search results.
- I've legit never understood it's appeal. Like what even is the purpose of it?
  
  I wasn't a heavy poster on Twitter, but I was a heavy user. Unlike the Lemmy/Reddit model, it's much more real time. So when I wanted to see how things were going with a piece of news of any sort, basically, twitter was better at that.
  Its also much more person centered - you curate specifically a list of who you want to follow rather than just topics, so there could often be crossover. Usually for me, this meant I'd listen to some podcast or something for a while, figure out I like the host and their personality or often just taste, and then follow them. The added benefit being that most people I'd follow on twitter weren't so big that if you tweet at them and you're not an asshole, you'll get a response.

I mean it's literally in the terms and conditions of both the App Store and Play Store for social media to have a block button lol
- Elon complaining about some conspirancy on why their app got taken down for not complying.

This is incredibly consistent with the "free speech" crowd thinking free speech entitles you to an audience.

Unreal. It's not even incompetence, he really is just tanking the site on purpose.
- No he's not.
  He's a right wing grifter and always has been. And like many on the right, he views harassment as a form of "free speech" which should be acceptable.
  He's not tanking the site on purpose. He's tanking it because his bullshit ideology naturally results in creating a hostile environment that people don't want to be a part of.
  
  im pretty sure he's just reacting to the chrome extension
- I don't think so, largely because of how big his ego is. I don't think he'd willingly become a laughingstock.
- Lemmy mods removed talking about piracy. It's not that weird.
  
  LW admins removed a community focused on piracy because they were afraid of getting sued. Even if they'd win ultimately, legal representation is expensive. If you want to see it here though, I'm sure you could work out a binding contract of some kind where you agree to take on all expenses and legal fees for any piracy related litigation.

The block feature is not there out of the goodness of their CEO's heart.
It is there to limit liability from harassment. After all, why police harassment laws at your expense. When you can get the end user to enforce it for you.
It's just Dumb evil.
- It's also a feature explicitly required by both the Apple and Google app stores for apps that have user generated content.
  https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
  1.2 User-Generated Content
  Apps with user-generated content present particular challenges, ranging from intellectual property infringement to anonymous bullying. To prevent abuse, apps with user-generated content or social networking services must include:
  ...
  The ability to block abusive users from the service
  https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9876937?hl=en
  User Generated Content
  User-generated content (UGC) is content that users contribute to an app, and which is visible to or accessible by at least a subset of the app's users.
  Apps that contain or feature UGC, including apps which are specialized browsers or clients to direct users to a UGC platform, must implement robust, effective, and ongoing UGC moderation that:
  ...
  Provides an in-app system for blocking UGC and users;
  Every day he further proves that he has no idea what he's doing. He's 100% going to reverse this decision when he find out all of the things he should have know before saying anything.
  
  Lmao he’s gonna get himself booted from BOTH app stores 😂
  
  Is this real? That’s hilarious.
- It's chaotic good, because by destroying his platform, he is making the fedi grow. Surely there has to be a point where people will leave, right?
  
  Did people stop using centralised services after all the data breaches and privacy scandals?

This is so dumb, what is he thinking? What's the angle?
Dumbness aside, Twitter is only usable if you block all of the blue check spammers who add nothing to any discussion.
Maybe he's doing it so you can't block blue checks? But it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
- I half wonder if he is running an experiment to see how much his users are willing to put up with so that all the other tech companies can figure out how far they can push us.
  
  I think it’s that and ads. Easier to sell promotional stuff when the whole user base is simply incapable of hiding your shill posts.
  
  It's been non-stop advanced bullshit after bullshit coming out of basically all corpos for the past year, but things were always headed in this direction. Muskrat just helped speed things along. The silver lining in all of this is the Fediverse and other platforms are finally popping off. Hopefully that trend gains more momentum and big tech dies before we end up further into a future we don't want to be in.
  
  This but his goal is to find the line and step over it, not toe it. He didn't like Twitter being a liberal leaning platform that pushed extreme conservatives out so he's reversing that. The only nuance he's using is to do it slowly enough that there's still libs to pwn on his platform over the rather than having them all leave at once. Plus if he can chase them away rather than ban them, he can claim to be more about free speech. But this is all about suppressing opinions he doesn't like, with an added bonus that he can ban people for not loving him.
- in the next iteration he’ll make it so you can only block people who don’t have twitter blue
- deleted by creator
  
  This is pretty wise, I think. I do believe you have figured out the reason, or at least part of the reason. Driving up rage engagement!
- People can't block him anymore, no more hiding from his opinions
  
  That’s what I was thinking. Either a specific person blocked him that he got upset about or the amount of people that have him blocked upset him. Either way it’s personal and he’s throwing a tantrum like a toddler. Again.
- This is so dumb, what is he thinking? What’s the angle?
  I'd guess that he wants to control what people see for one reason or another. I blocked a lot of communities here to make my feed more enjoyable.
- Less work needed to maintain the system? He fired most engineers, those remaining can only do so much at one time.
  
  What's there to maintain, the feature is already there and should be relatively simple. I can't imagine that Twitter backend is so bad that it requires active work on all components.

Lmao this is going to be incredible to watch unfold. I am assuming Elon himself has blocked an absolute fuckton of accounts that are just out to troll him, so either he’s gonna (rightly) get absolutely inundated by trolls, or he’s gonna make the devs disable it for everyone except him and whoever else he wants to give that feature to.
- yeah, elon's not going to see the negative consequences of this personally, because he'll just use the "ban" button instead of the "block" button.
  
  I’m betting I can reverse engineer how to create spam accounts in a mostly automated fashion faster than he can ban accounts. And I bet a lot of other people can do the same.
  I feel very confident saying that he’s not gonna win this one.
- twitter blue (X Pro) members

Yup. X makes no sense. Please delete it.
- I resentfully hung on to it after the take over but soon as a the icon changed from the bird on my phone I just couldn't and uninstalled it.
  
  Thankfully I left it much earlier.
- I'm rather enjoying watching it go to shit, though
- I really don't understand who uses it at this point
  
  It's quite popular here.

- That is exactly what he wants Twitter to be.
- Twitter is about to become downright dangerous for marginalized populations (LGBTQ+, autistic, sex workers...)
  Astronaut meme.jpg
  It always was. Some just thought it was worth it to brave the abuse to get the message out.
- That's what people have been saying about every step of the musk acquisition process and yet still people use Twitter. Thinking back to the Facebook privacy controversy years back, everybody still uses Facebook. There can be an infinite amount of red flags and warnings, but these websites are such a huge part of some people's lives that none of it matters to them, unfortunately.
  
  I don't know a single person under 20 that uses Facebook. It's either paid groups or old people.
- That's good. Let it die, shut it down.
- Will I be safe if I'm two of those things? Like if I'm a cis-het autistic sex-worker, will it be a double negative and cancel out?
  Edit: I was just trying to make a silly joke. I didn't mean to upset anyone
  
  bro wtf are u on
  
  I caught that it was a silly joke and got a little kick out of it. I'm not sure why other people reacted the way they did. Maybe they thought you were mocking or making fun? I dunno.
  
  Lay off the crack man

I cant wait for Twitter/X to cease to exist.
- Same, but for the guy who owns it.

“Mr. Billionaire Tech Company CEO, what was your detailed reasoning for the removal of a highly important feature that benefits way more users than the ones it harms?”
“It makes no sense”

Hasn't Elon blocked people before tho? And even been public when blocking some people?
- Don't worry, he's going to be able to keep it doing in the meantime it becomes a premium feature.

Huh, I have never been a fan of blocking people, but this is a very dumb move, normal Twitter news of course.
- Blocking people is essential, I've blocked tons of people and communities on here already
  
  I'm sure a couple hundred thousands accounts blocked Elon and now he's salty lmao
  
  Communities I agree with and I have done so, but blocking people is meh for me, I better ignore.
- I have never been a fan of blocking people
  Must be nice, not having to deal with being harassed by people who wish you were dead.
  
  Well, to be honest I would laugh if an online troll or multiple said that to me, but I agree it could become tiring if it was constant and non stop, which seems to be the case if this blocking shit show applies.
- I don’t understand this. On a personal level I want to have access to a custom feed of things that interest me. Like a newspaper. Why is the expectation that this newspaper should include absolutely all content. I am not trying to destroy democracy, I just don’t want to see/interact/be reminded of certain content.
- The accounts I block on any platform are mostly spammers working within the limitations of the platform by masquerading as normal accounts. Like a couple posts of very generic things, an attractive woman's profile pic, all their follows are completely random across the world, you know it when you see it. Those friends you have who follow them back... then they try to follow all their follows, they work like a virus. "Mutual followers" is gold to them.

Just when you think he's run out of stupid decisions to make, he does it again.
- Did you really think he is it off stupid ideas? I'm pretty sure he has a file cabinet full of stupid ideas
- I truly think he can't stand not being in the spotlight so much that he'll make any bad decision as long as it's shocking enough to make headlines.

He'll make it a premium feature
- This is most likely to happen. I also think there's a strong possibility they are doing this to combat all the addons which block premium users. Those are staggeringly effective at messing up suggestion algorithm.
  Can say am a proud user myself.
  
  Why stay on Twitter? Shit was a trash fire 10 years ago. Got 3 times worse every year since 2015
  
  The problem is the CPU effort it takes to produce 100 Xits for your timeline, then search that list for everyone on your blocklist, remove those Xits, then possibly go back to the suggestion API to get more since there are only 40 Xits left, etc. etc. is cost prohibitive... Especially when you have millions of users with thousands of accounts on their blocklists.
  
  This is the way
- Shhhh!

I recommend just blocking the entirely of Xwitter. Your life will be better off.
- Xitter*
  
  pronounced as "shitter"
  
  The X is pronounced as a Sh

He is actually, seriously saying "I don't get it, so it must be bad/unnecessary"
- His ego can't handle that he's probably the most blocked person on Twitter
  
  Agree, I think that's probably the driving force behind this. He can't troll most people anymore because any even remotely sane person (who's still on Twitter for some reason) has blocked him. Musk lives to troll, so it must drive him absolutely crazy.

Is this man actually retarded or is he trolling us? Seems like he's intentionally shitting on Twitter

He is really attempting to run it into the ground isn't he?
- One the one hand, Twitter is gone yay!
  On the other hand, did everyone just go to TikTok instead?
  Will we reach a point of social media being like elections and is a matter of lesser of two evils instead of which is better debate?

Such an incredibly stupid idea
- It becomes less stupid the moment you realize Elon is angry some people are allowed not to have his bullshit forced down their throats. Then everything starts to make sense.
  
  Nah, it's still incredibly stupid, just not from Elons viewpoint.
  
  He might be the most blocked on the platform
  
  I don't really think that makes it less stupid, you could do that in a much more subtle manner without driving away users. This is just pointless pettiness from a power dork who has been blocked a great many times in his life.
- It makes no sense

This is going to get buried, but I think it's important to note that block on twitter (unlike on most platforms) works both ways. You can still mute an account, and you won't see any of their content or mentions.
By removing block, it means you can no longer block a person from following you, but you can still prevent seeing their stuff. After all - all that person has to do see your public tweets is open an incognito browser window, and view your profile. If you have a private profile, none of this applies to begin with. So in that sense, I agree with Elon - block in its current form on twitter makes no sense.
Edit: Responding directly onto your posts - good point, I hadn't considered that. It's partially circumvented by changing the setting so can comment on your posts, but I agree that's more effort. For all the other things though - if you block someone now they can just take a screenshot of your tweet and comment on that.
- After all - all that person has to do see your public tweets is open an incognito browser window, and view your profile.
  Pretty sure you have to sign in, or will very soon.
  And people can likely still retweet, you just won't see it.
  So Ben Shapiro can still retweet everything AOC says to "slam" her, and only the people who haven't muted him (his fans) can circlejerk and post harassing replies. She just wouldn't see it.
- Block also blocks them from seeing your posts and responding to them. Which is valuable. I don’t want people to creep on my profile if I’ve blocked them.
  I use mute to get people who tweet in the wrong language off my timeline.
  I deleted my twitter so I guess it’s not my problem now
  
  Fair enough. I never used the algorithm timeline that inserts strangers into your stream so that was never an issue for me. Just the people I follow, chronologically, for me. Whether I block them or not, people who really want to would still be able to read my tweets. Blocking them just gives them more acknowledgement than they deserve.
  I haven't deleted mine yet, but I only seldom check it. Left this video as a pinned post though, it might inspire some people to quit as well.
- Lmao this is overlooking the most important part of the block feature. Without the Block feature spammers, scammers, and crazies can destroy anyones posts by filling it with dick pics, scams, gore, anything. Blocks prevent people from posting on your posts.
  
  Without the Block feature spammers, scammers, and crazies can destroy anyones posts by filling it with dick pics, scams, gore, anything.
  Pretty sure they'd only destroy their own account with that - they'd be 1 report away from being banned. If none of your followers were to report it, it's probably time to cancel your account.
- They still can comment on your stuff and create hate bandwagons. This is actually pretty common.
- As long as mute still gets their posts out of my feed it's all fine by me I guess. I can't figure out what's the downside here. I couldn't care less if the people I've muted can see my profile or not. Preventing individual users from accessing your profile is kind of petty to be honest.

You’re going to hear his dumb thoughts whether you want to or not.
- It's easy. Just don't use Twitter.

I am so glad I ditched twitter when Musk took over. Blocking abusive people is a critical function on that cesspool of a social medium.
- Same.

Musk is intentionally killing twitter confirmed. First he tried to tank its value and retract his buy offer but was forced in to the purchase by the SEC. So now he's just playing the long game by killing it step by step with his own hands.
- Why couldn't he just shut it down if he wanted to? What's the purpose of wasting that much money slowly?
  
  If he shut it down then the masses would flood to a handful of new options and a replacement would emerge in a week or two.
  By dragging it out, it slows that down.
  Also, if he shut it down, he'd get a week or two of headlines. This way he can milk a year of it.
  
  Attention!
- Really its just devolving into a fascinating experiment in how much momentum it requires people to leave a platform en masse in 2023.
- Maybe his 4D chess move is trying to push everyone to federated apps, what a great guy!
  
  He hated twitter for how effective it was in spreading awareness on progressive issues. Him and all the other billionaires want that platform split up, and it only costs him $44b, a fraction of his net worth.
- He wants to turn it into Stormfront.

He was probably the most blocked user on Twitter

I think this is what's gonna finally end it for Twitter. There has already been a huge increase in harassment/hate, and if people can't block other users spewing that shit, they will actually leave this time

He's probably having a fit over everyone blocking him from their feeds
- It makes NO SENSE to block me. I'm so smart!

Holy shit. The block feature was the only function that actually worked when dealing with trolls and assholes.
Remove that feature, and the remaining Queer and POC communities are going to be forced off the platform due to the abuse they will not be able to block.
I suspect this is mainly because people with the Blue checks keep crying about getting blocked.
- Working as intended. Musk isn't half as smart as he thinks he is, but he's still not stupid enough to think it will play out any way.
  He wants to ensure far-right voices are heard and that any opposition to them is bullied off the platform.
  There is no need to give him the benefit of the doubt just because he doesn't admit it out loud. Actions speak louder than words and every action he has taken has pandered to the far-right.
  
  Agreed. Twitter will just be another extreme right shithole.
  It's such a shame. Twitter has been around for so long and had been vital for many peoples careers and connections. I hate what he's done with it. =(

I blocked elon musk long time ago...
I havnt logged into twitter since he bought it though. Cant remember if i dleeted my user

- I'm becoming convinced that whereas I originally thought Elon was intentionally tanking the company so he could bankrupt it and write it off while having enough plausible deniability to tell his creditors he tried his best, what hes actually doing is being a pathetic manchild no one wants to be friends with, so He's trying to manipulate twitter to make people be his friends. There's reason to believe He's adjusted the algorithm to boost his own tweets. He invites banned people back to the platfirm because "he's a free speech absolutist" which not only is doing them a favor, its also blowing one of their favorite dog whistles. He introduces a payment scheme for "top posters" that when you dig into it, it seems like what makes someone a top poster is when they interact with him. This next turn, people are blocking his tweets, and he doesn't want to be blocked, so he's getting rid of the feature. I'm sure, too, this will also earn him points with the right wing cult he's been nurturing through unbanning their accounts and giving them money
- it's one thing for you to choose not to see me, it's another for you to choose what I get to see or whether I can comment about something. the old reddit block (out of sight, out of mind) functioned like that and it's the only way I think user-blocking should work.

So no one will be able to stop the firehose of neonazi propaganda?
Advertisers loving that?

Blocking makes perfect sense
- Not if your understanding of the US Constitution is the same as it was when you were in grade 3.

That's why I deleted my Twitter. It makes no sense.

This is hardly about technology now is it?
- It never was 🌎 👩‍🚀🔫👩‍🚀

I hope that when someone inevitably kills themselves from online bullying, that Twitter and Musk gave massive legal repercussions.
- No. Making platforms liable for what people do with them is bad for the entire Internet and for everyone.
- Touch grass
  
  Too busy touching ass my guy the grass can wait

"I'm tired of people blocking me"
Wait did I say that or just think that?
"Wait did I say that or just think that??"
Oh HeyThisIsn'TheYMCA You need more horse stewardesses

Yet another reason to be glad I quit using it in October 2022.
There's no good reason to make people interact with people who are bothering them.
- You're so close to your 1 year chip! We're all proud of you!

I wonder when he says “it makes no sense” if he is just confused by the complexity of it. Because blocking is more complicated than it might seem at first. It introduces issues where different people see different versions of things, and in some ways blocking can be a little like choosing to put your head in the sand regarding someone, but they can still be around, flinging shit at you.
- He probably realized that millions of people blocked him and it hurt his ego.
  
  Being blocked by a lot of people did drop his priority in the Twitter algorithm, enough that he had what remained of Twitter's engineers try to fix it by bumping him up to the top.

I need to block like 5 bot follows and three fake crypto impersonation accounts including me in a retweet daily. This would break the experience completely for me.
- I'm sure am glad that nobody is impersonating me to sell crypto here!

Block makes sense. He knows it makes no sense to remove it. Block has existed on the internet long enough to assume this is completely malicious intent.
Like I flatout refuse to assume he removed a feature used literally everywhere else without ulterior motive. This is just to allow for bad actors to continue to voice themselves without any prevention tools.
- Yeah, it's literally "You're going to be forced to consume content you don't want to" and "People wil now be able to harass you publicly."
  
  You can mute people you don't want to see posts from instead.
- Why isn't the mute function enough?
  I actually never understood why the block function existed, it clearly told the account you blocked that you have blocked them, prompting them to create an alt.
  Mute is like shadowban, you won't ever see them and they believe that you can see them.
  
  Blocking stops the assholes from interacting with your own tweets entirely. Sure, they can make an alt to get around that, but that's more work for them. Blocking is simple and quick.
  Mute was never good enough because it still allowed assholes to interact with your tweets.
  Source: Queer lady that had to block people in order to Twitter to not be trash before Elon bought it.
  
  Doesn’t mute allow them to see your posts still?

"I don't want to see content from this person", legit
"I don't want to get notifications about this person's content", legit
"I don't want this person's content to be able to link to my profile or use my name", dubious
"I want this person to have to log out to see my content", nonsense
- How so? Even if I think people are posting the stupidest, most self-incriminating bullshit ever, I don't have any special right to see their content or forward to my audience if they don't want me to.
  
  It still makes no sense that I can just log out take a screenshot log back in and share it. That's the part that's just a bit weird. It makes sense on s platform where not everything is publicly accessible

i have like 500 people in my Twitter block list :|
- Why are you still on the website at all
  
  To block people. Duh.
  
  If you want to follow artists and avoid all the right wing Nazis, 500 blocks is about the right number to keep your feed clear.
  I personally block about 10,000 and comment vociferously on right wing threads, just so WatermElon Musk has to spend $$$ to present threads without my comments in the right-wing echo chamber. Block lists are fairly database-search intensive.
- I had over 900 by the time I deleted my account. Twitter would have been unusable without the block feature for me.

Yea no way that's happening. The guy can get away with a lot but burning the entire app to the ground probably has a few legal safeguards.

You could argue against creating the feature, but once it already exists and it's not taking up any real processing power or cluttering the interface, why would you ever remove any feature. Does he understand it? No. Do some people use it and find it beneficial? Probably, yeah. Are you forced to use it? No. So what's the problem?
It's like a car manufacturer ordering a recall to remove the the mirror on the passenger side visor because he never uses it. Some people do, my dude, it's not hurting anything, and it will actually cost you money to remove it instead of leaving it. Just leave it alone, dude.
Or... he's not being honest and he wants to remove it because it hurts his ego to know that so many block his account. Yeah, it's probably that.

This is what it sounds like when a severely divorced person screams, "WHY WON'T THIS FUCKING COMPANY FAIL!!! I'M DOING EVERYTHING I CAN TO ELIMINATE THIS THREAT AND IT WON'T DIE!"

He literally bought it to try to make a payment processor and be king of the internet.
Only twitter users think twitter is important.

'You'll listen to nazi propaganda even if we have to shove it down your throat!'
Musk probably