Elon Musk’s X is planning to make changes to how the block function works, breaking away from the norms of other social media apps. When the policies around blocking change, people who have been blocked by someone will still be able to see that person’s public posts. However, they won’t be able to like, repost, or reply to these posts.

“Blocking public posts makes no sense,” Musk said on X last year. “It needs to be deprecated in favor of a stronger form of mute.”

Jack Dorsey, former co-founder and CEO of Twitter, agreed with this sentiment. In a way, Dorsey and Musk have a point. On most social media platforms, if someone blocks you, you can still find their public posts by logging out of your account. But Tracy Chou, founder of the anti-harassment tool Block Party, argues that this extra friction matters.

Chou wrote on X, “I’m sure someone from Twitter (Elon) is arguing that block evasions were always possible from other accounts, but the point is that friction matters!! Making it easy for a creeper to creep is not a good thing!!”

Many X users agreed with Chou, generating increased interest in other platforms. Bluesky, a Twitter alternative, has added another 1.2 million users over the past two days as users searched for an alternative to X. Bluesky climbed to No. 2 in the Social Networking category on the U.S. App Store’s top charts, up from No. 181 the previous day.

These spikes in growth don’t always lead to long-term usage. However, unlike some other platform updates — like its name change from Twitter to X — this policy change isn’t just symbolic. It prioritizes the experiences of people being blocked, rather than those doing the blocking, who are often more immediately at risk.

“Today, block can be used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked,” X’s engineering team wrote in a post. “Users will be able to see if such behavior occurs with this update, allowing for greater transparency.”

This stance can be alienating for users more concerned about their safety than this cherry-picked scenario, where they could be blocked by someone sharing information about them. Claire Waxman, who serves in the London Mayor’s Office as the appointed Victims’ Commissioner, is concerned about how the changes could impact abuse victims.

“This is a dangerous decision for a social media platform and will have serious implications for victims — especially those being stalked — and their safety,” Waxman wrote on X. “Enabling blocked users to see posts is catering to abusers and stalkers, indulging and facilitating their behaviors.”

Colten Meisner, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University who studies social media harassment, agrees.

“The block feature has been a first line of defense for people being harassed,” Meisner told TechCrunch. “It feels like there’s no other way to interpret this policy change but to say, ‘Victims of harassment, the first line of defense you’ve had, we’re now going to take away.’ Because if you want views, if you want visibility, that’s what it comes with on X.”

Meisner also sees a trend in how Musk’s personal beliefs and vendettas have been reflected in platform policy.

“[Musk] is definitely the archetype of the person that’s being blocked, and so it almost feels like a childish retaliation in some sense,” Meisner said. “Elon specifically has had this history of making policy changes basically at his own whims.”

For instance, X has suppressed links to competitors like Substack and Mastodon at times. The platform also once labeled NPR as “state-affiliated media,” a label typically reserved for publications lacking editorial independence from their government. In a platform already witnessing rises in hate speech, changes to the block feature suggest this trend will continue.

“This policy change is just a massive backstep in the history of harassment,” Meisner added.