Elon Musk turns X’s block button into a “glorified mute button”

X, formerly Twitter, is now letting blocked users see posts made by the people who blocked them.

“We’re starting to launch the block function update,” X’s engineering team wrote yesterday. X previously said that after the change, “If your posts are set to public, accounts you have blocked will be able to view them, but they will not be able to engage (like, reply, repost, etc.).”

To justify the change, X said the block functionality could previously be “used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked.” The change will allow people who are blocked “to see if such behavior occurs… allowing for greater transparency,” X said.

X owner Elon Musk argued last year that “blocking public posts makes no sense. It needs to be deprecated in favor of a stronger form of mute.”

There were many angry responses to the change, both yesterday and previously, when X said it would be coming soon. While some users may only use blocking to avoid seeing accounts that are annoying, some X users said the policy could be harmful for people who use blocking as a safety measure.

The new policy could help stalkers and other bad actors, some said. Blocked accounts could view, screenshot, and share content posted by the person who blocked them, some people pointed out. The block button is now “a glorified mute button,” one user said.

Blocked users can view and search for posts

Before the change, X’s support page on blocking accounts said blocked accounts cannot “view your posts when logged in on X (unless they report you, and your posts mention them,” “find your posts in search when logged in on X,” or “view a Moment you’ve created when logged in on X.”