 "Here's what forced Twitter's hand to bring back the 'block' button")
If you ever doubted the impact of social networks, this is a quick lesson in the power of crowdsourced opinions. Over Thursday and Friday, Twitter changed the functionality of the block button on its service and changed it back after an outcry on the website itself forced its hand .
Twitter had changed the block feature on its service to essentially turn it into a glorified mute button. When you blocked someone on the service earlier, the person was not able to tweet to you, favourite or retweet your tweets and contact you in any way possible. With the change, the block button ended up merely muting your abusers.
Unblocking the block
While you wouldn’t be notified of any interaction from their part, they could mention you, retweet your tweets and basically go through your timeline to find more information to attack you with. The company’s rationale behind this change was that the abusers would not be instigated to take a worse step to attack the victim, once he realised he was blocked.
That explanation, however, did not go down well with Twitter users who pointed out issues like abusers being able to retweet their victims’ tweets to a wider audience involving more trolls. Promptly, Twitter changed its mind, reverting to the older ‘block’ button.
Here are some tweets that caught the most attention on Twitter, probably playing a role in getting the site to reconsider its decision:
Intrigued by all things social, Nishtha will invariably tweet about you. When not tweeting or writing about the next viral video, you will hear her proclaiming her love to Metallica, James Hetfield, Opeth, Akerfeldt and all bands that go 'growl'. She also obsesses about ACP Pradyuman and South Park and you will always find her moving around with a book. Her focus is on all the happening stuff in the tech domain, and she won't hesitate to take a shot at some of the oddball devices that make their way to our labs.