Twitter tweaked the "block user" feature in order to simply mute the tweets and replies from a blocked user instead of completely making them invisible to the blocker. Additionally, the blocked user would continue to see the tweets from the blocker by visiting their profile.
However, these changes received a heavy backlash from the user community as tweets with #RestoreTheBlock hashtag started appearing. Many users who had been harassed by spammers and internet trolls expressed their displeasure with the new behaviour of the feature.
The company, which went public recently, took note of the users' concerns and held an emergency meeting on Thursday night to decide upon reverting the changes. Michael Sippey, Twitter's Product VP posted to the blog that, “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.” He added that though the current blocking method isn't ideal, they have reinstated it due to the privacy concerns from users and would be exploring better ways to implement "blocking" in the future.
It must be noted that though a user may be blocked, they can still view the tweets of the blocker when not signed-in as most users have public profiles.
Source: Digital Trends | Image via Twitter
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