Twitter Restores Block Feature After Users Revolt

By Vivek

| Published: Friday, December 13, 2013, 11:49 [IST]

One of the mostly used social networking sites, Twitter, on Thursday decided to restore the ability to block unwanted followers from peering at posts. The short lived new feature in the social networking site was highly criticized. The move is being highly criticized at the moment as users complain about the abuser and stalkers constantly reacting on their tweets.

Twitter Restores Block Feature After Users Revolt

The restoration of the blocking mode was enabled just hours after the San Francisco-based networking company modified its blocking mechanism to let unwanted Twitter followers re-tweet, like, or peer at messages in public accounts of people who block them.

The change to block lists that was brought about by the change in the blocking mode essentially blinded people to unwanted followers.

In fact the new blocking mode was opposite to the prior update where the blocked Twitter user was not allowed to see the other person's account or posts.

Twitter also said that the change was meant to protect victims of harassment who wanted to filter out abusive messages but feared that the act of blocking a user would prompt retaliation. Turns out that Twitter wanted to offer users a polite means to block the other users.

Regarding the restoration of the blocking mode, Twitter's Michael Sippey said, "Earlier today, we made a change to the way the 'block' function of Twitter works." He further added, "We have decided to revert the change after receiving feedback from many users - we never want to introduce features at the cost of users feeling less safe. Any blocks you had previously instituted are still in effect."