X and the Canadian government head for conflict

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/10/2024 (413 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are interesting times ahead in the land of social media — at least, there are in the land of X, formerly known as Twitter.

The social media company is substantially curtailing the ability to block abusive users.

Right now, if you block another user for being offensive or abusive, they can’t read your posts or comment on them. They can’t even see them. The changes that X/Twitter is putting in place will mean that abusive trolls will still be able to see your posts, even if you’ve blocked them. They won’t be able to comment. The only option for users who want to stop trolls is to make their accounts private.

If you’ve had a persistent stalker, the idea that they can now watch your timeline is, well, frightening. The decision by X is one that many say will make the site even more hostile, especially to women.

But the move puts the social media giant at odds with a law that’s currently making its way through the Canadian Parliament.

Section 58 of the Online Harms Act says, “The operator of a regulated service must make available to users who have an account or are otherwise registered with the service tools that enable those users to block other users who have an account or are otherwise registered with the service from finding or communicating with them on the service.”

Musk’s plan to let creepers peer in your digital windows may address half of the coming Canadian law, by making it so that the creepers can’t communicate with the people they have been harassing.

But it won’t satisfy the other part of the law, requiring social media companies to provide a block that stops abusive users from finding the people they’ve harassed.

Twitter is already a sharply different online space than it was even months ago: many users have noticed increases in hateful and abusive posts, along with a complaints system that finds abusive posts to be acceptable discourse.

The platform has also turned to the right, following owner Elon Musk’s decision to openly back Donald Trump in the American presidential race. It also formally allowed online adult content.

Several of those choices have hurt the platform’s marketability: it will be curious to see what a set-to with the federal government might do.

Musk may be just fine about having X/Twitter live on without Canadian users, but there are other things at play.

Business, for one — or more to the point, money.

Because two of the largest app stores, Google Play and Apple, also require app developers to have a functional blocking system. Apple requires developers to provide “the ability to block abusive users from the service.” Google Play? “An in-app system for blocking.”

It remains to be seen how those suppliers will view X/Twitter’s decision to weaken the block function so substantially.

One thing’s for certain.

It’s lucky that Musk took X private so that he doesn’t have to answer to shareholders. The value of his US$44-billion investment buying the social media firm is now recorded by some investors as being worth around US$9.4 billion, and as it continues serving as a Musk vanity project, its value has been consistently sliding downwards. Third-party analysis consistently shows the company is losing users, and Musk has taken to threatening to sue advertisers for not using the platform.

If the X app vanishes from online stores, and if users and advertisers continue to flee from the increasingly toxic public forum, a valuation of US$9 billion might end up looking like the good old days to those who loaned Musk money to buy the platform.

Interesting days ahead.