You may have blocked someone on X but now they can see your public posts anyway
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $205*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/11/2024 (703 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Elon Musk’s X has been modified so that accounts you’ve blocked on the social media platform can still see your public posts.
X updated its Help Center page over the weekend to explain how blocking now works on the site. While you can still block accounts, those accounts will now be able to see your posts unless you have made your account private. They won’t, however, be able to reply to them or repost them. Blocked accounts also won’t be able to follow you and you won’t be able to follow them, as has been the case before the policy change.
In addition, if the owner of an account you blocked visits your profile on X, they will be able to learn that you have blocked them.
X indicated that the change was aimed at protecting users who have been blocked.
In a post on its Engineering account on the service, X said the blocking feature “can be used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked. Users will be able to see if such behavior occurs with this update, allowing for greater transparency.”
But critics say the changes could harm victims and survivors of abuse, for instance. Thomas Ristenpart, professor of computer security at Cornell Tech and co-founder of the Clinic to End Tech Abuse, said it can be critical for the safety of survivors of intimate-partner violence to be able to control who sees their posts.
“We often hear reports about posts to social media enabling abusers to stalk them or triggering further harassment,” he said. “Removing users’ ability to block problematic individuals will be a huge step backwards for survivor safety.”
Since he took over the former Twitter in 2022, Musk has loosened policies the platform had put in place to clamp down on hate and harassment. In moves often said to be made in the name of free speech, he dismantled the company’s Trust and Safety advisory group and restored accounts that were previously banned for hate speech, harassment and spreading misinformation. When a nonprofit research group documented a rise of hate speech on the platform, X sued them. The lawsuit was dismissed.
