3 ms·

It’s apparent that design decisions are made keeping Musk in mind. I won’t be surprised if a lot of people have blocked Musk on X as they don’t want to see prop

It’s apparent that design decisions are made keeping Musk in mind. I won’t be surprised if a lot of people have blocked Musk on X as they don’t want to see propaganda being spewed. And, he wants them to see it. I cannot think of any other reason why this decision was made. Are there any?

jeswin 2y ago
> And, he wants them to see it. I cannot think of any other reason why this decision was made. Are there any? Yeah, because it didn't make any sense. All you had to do to see blocked content was to log out of Twitter.
- Pxtl 2y ago
  If you know the content existed, which in many cases you didn't. Like, most of the time the only time you saw blocked content was if somebody you followed quote-tweeted it (or they reply-tweeted to it and you investigated). Otherwise? It's like it doesn't exist at all. It became even more difficult to see blocked content after Twitter nerfed the logged-out view of the site so you couldn't even see comment-threads. It wasn't a perfect solution obviously but it helped. Helping is good.
  - hombre_fatal 2y ago
    On the other hand if someone blocks you yet your Twitter circle keeps interacting with that person–maybe because they are a big player in the space–your feed is full of "You cannot read this message" tombstones. It's stupid that you can't just see the tweet/reply at that point. And no less provocative. I guess they could hide quote-tweets from people you follow if they responded to someone who blocked you but that has major drawbacks and is weirdly heavy handed. (Why should someone blocking me prevent me from seeing tweets from people I follow?) I think Elon's change to the block system has the most sensible trade-offs in this example. If someone blocks you, their tweets don't show up on your feed, but you can still see them when they interact with other tweets and when people quote-tweet them. It should really just prevent interaction.
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    Blocking from interacting makes sense and from showing up in the feed/search results also makes sense, blocking from viewing at all encourages trolls and deceivers. E.g. I’ve noticed cases where user A replies to user B, writes something pretending to carry on a conversation, then immediately after tweeting goes to block user B such that it looks like, to passing readers, that user B made a decision to stop responding. Which of course, in addition to wrecking the credibility of user A and deceiving user B, slightly reduces the credibility of every other conversation chain on the site and the site itself, every time that is discovered.
    - hombre_fatal 2y ago
      Lately I've noticed on Reddit people blocking me the second they respond to me so that they have the last word in an e-fight*. Horrible implementation. *yeah, 20 years on the internet and I still have that dog in me
      - MichaelZuo 2y ago
        Yeah reddit is full of shady tricks like that, either as design choices, admin policies, or by mod coalitions of major subreddits. Edit: And probably via other ways I haven’t heard of. So much so, and considering it has gone uncorrected for many years, that it seems likely that’s the intended purpose of the system, to dupe naive teenagers and other susceptible groups.
        danslacker 2y ago
        [flagged]
        MichaelZuo 2y ago
        Your point…?
    - Pxtl 2y ago
      I agree that that's a problem but this is the wrong solution. Letting the blockee see the blocker doesn't help them correct the record if the blocker has replied to them before blocking. They're still not permitted to reply. You can unblock-reply-block and do that all day under either model. Imho the right answer is just to a) Hide the blocker's replies to the blockee in an expand-to-view mode (like Twitter's View Hidden Replies feature) so that in a large conversation the non-blocking parties are the emphasized ones. and b) When shown explain that the reply was hidden because the reply-er has blocked the reply-ee. I assume they want to make blocking semi-secret so it's not showing dirty laundry all over twitter to people who aren't involved in the feud, but either way if party A and B had an argument and then one side unilaterally prevents the other from continuing it, that should made visible to the reader.
- Groxx 2y ago
  It added friction, and that's often all that's needed to stop low-effort harassers (which are BY FAR the most numerous). Hell-bans work even better, and still do nothing that can't be seen publicly. I guarantee you that they knew this. Everyone doing anything social knows it. It's an industry standard because it's extremely effective.
madeofpalk 2y ago
That's not the way the change to blocking worked right? I haven't used the site since he became owner, but isn't the recent change that if you yourself have been blocked by someone, you will now be able to see their posts if they're public (just as if you were logged out) and you stumble onto them somehow? So if Musk is being blocked all the time, he wouldn't be able to see posts from the randos who blocked him. His posts presumably would still be hidden by those who blocked him?
Uhhrrr 2y ago
If you don't follow him and use "Following" instead of "For You", you will basically never see him. "Following" is invariably better anyway, because then you're seeing the things you want to instead of the things that the algorithm suggests.

jeswin 2y ago

> And, he wants them to see it. I cannot think of any other reason why this decision was made. Are there any? Yeah, because it didn't make any sense. All you had to do to see blocked content was to log out of Twitter.

Pxtl 2y ago
If you know the content existed, which in many cases you didn't. Like, most of the time the only time you saw blocked content was if somebody you followed quote-tweeted it (or they reply-tweeted to it and you investigated). Otherwise? It's like it doesn't exist at all. It became even more difficult to see blocked content after Twitter nerfed the logged-out view of the site so you couldn't even see comment-threads. It wasn't a perfect solution obviously but it helped. Helping is good.
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  On the other hand if someone blocks you yet your Twitter circle keeps interacting with that person–maybe because they are a big player in the space–your feed is full of "You cannot read this message" tombstones. It's stupid that you can't just see the tweet/reply at that point. And no less provocative. I guess they could hide quote-tweets from people you follow if they responded to someone who blocked you but that has major drawbacks and is weirdly heavy handed. (Why should someone blocking me prevent me from seeing tweets from people I follow?) I think Elon's change to the block system has the most sensible trade-offs in this example. If someone blocks you, their tweets don't show up on your feed, but you can still see them when they interact with other tweets and when people quote-tweet them. It should really just prevent interaction.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  Blocking from interacting makes sense and from showing up in the feed/search results also makes sense, blocking from viewing at all encourages trolls and deceivers. E.g. I’ve noticed cases where user A replies to user B, writes something pretending to carry on a conversation, then immediately after tweeting goes to block user B such that it looks like, to passing readers, that user B made a decision to stop responding. Which of course, in addition to wrecking the credibility of user A and deceiving user B, slightly reduces the credibility of every other conversation chain on the site and the site itself, every time that is discovered.
  - hombre_fatal 2y ago
    Lately I've noticed on Reddit people blocking me the second they respond to me so that they have the last word in an e-fight*. Horrible implementation. *yeah, 20 years on the internet and I still have that dog in me
    - MichaelZuo 2y ago
      Yeah reddit is full of shady tricks like that, either as design choices, admin policies, or by mod coalitions of major subreddits. Edit: And probably via other ways I haven’t heard of. So much so, and considering it has gone uncorrected for many years, that it seems likely that’s the intended purpose of the system, to dupe naive teenagers and other susceptible groups.
      - danslacker 2y ago
        [flagged]
        MichaelZuo 2y ago
        Your point…?
  - Pxtl 2y ago
    I agree that that's a problem but this is the wrong solution. Letting the blockee see the blocker doesn't help them correct the record if the blocker has replied to them before blocking. They're still not permitted to reply. You can unblock-reply-block and do that all day under either model. Imho the right answer is just to a) Hide the blocker's replies to the blockee in an expand-to-view mode (like Twitter's View Hidden Replies feature) so that in a large conversation the non-blocking parties are the emphasized ones. and b) When shown explain that the reply was hidden because the reply-er has blocked the reply-ee. I assume they want to make blocking semi-secret so it's not showing dirty laundry all over twitter to people who aren't involved in the feud, but either way if party A and B had an argument and then one side unilaterally prevents the other from continuing it, that should made visible to the reader.
Groxx 2y ago
It added friction, and that's often all that's needed to stop low-effort harassers (which are BY FAR the most numerous). Hell-bans work even better, and still do nothing that can't be seen publicly. I guarantee you that they knew this. Everyone doing anything social knows it. It's an industry standard because it's extremely effective.

madeofpalk 2y ago

That's not the way the change to blocking worked right? I haven't used the site since he became owner, but isn't the recent change that if you yourself have been blocked by someone, you will now be able to see their posts if they're public (just as if you were logged out) and you stumble onto them somehow? So if Musk is being blocked all the time, he wouldn't be able to see posts from the randos who blocked him. His posts presumably would still be hidden by those who blocked him?

Uhhrrr 2y ago

If you don't follow him and use "Following" instead of "For You", you will basically never see him. "Following" is invariably better anyway, because then you're seeing the things you want to instead of the things that the algorithm suggests.