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Twitter Changes how Blocking People Works

Trolling and harassment is common place on the internet, and Twitter is a place where a lot of this happens all the time. Twitter though used to allow users to block other users that were harassing them. This meant that the person doing the trolling could not see the other person tweets or view their profile while signed in. Now, Twitter is making a change to the way blocking someone is handled. The only way block  someone now, and forces them to unfollow your account, is if your tweets are set to private.

 

Twitter has to keep an open forum, yet at the same time they require some protections for its users. Critics have said Twitter made this change so users could not block advertisers, but Twitter reps told TechCrunch it was to stop retaliation from users. So the way person who has been blocked no longer sees any message or notification. Twitter also says that it wants users to still be able to get news from Police, news organizations, and other services. And if a users trolls one of those organizations and get blocks they won’t be able to access that information, like they’d want that information in the first place.

Twitter should offer a way to mute users and force to unfollow options, but that should be rolled out very soon. With Twitter having to report to investors they have to worry what their users think about new features, and changes to policies/features. How do you feel about Twitter changing the way they block people?

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