Imagine this: You’re scrolling through your Twitter feed, and you see a notification pop up.
You find it odd—you’re not an influencer, and are only followed by some friends and a few strangers who like your mild political jokes and memes about your favourite movies. So it seems like someone must have tripped and landed in your Twitter replies when you notice a new comment.
When checking the notification, you’re treated to a barrage of obscenities and cruel comments. Whoever this is, they seem to take your very existence personally.
Naturally, you do what any reasonable person would. You delete the comment and block the user to avoid dealing with them again. Despite being accessible from home, social media is just as public as downtown Toronto. Users can curate their pages and feeds, choosing whose content they see and interact with daily to carve out a digital community.
At the same time, anyone can peer into your online world. For this reason, social media platforms allow users to limit interactions online. Privacy features allow users to secure their profiles behind a digital padlock, giving them the power to pick and choose who gets to interact with them.
However, not everyone wants to make their account private. Some people enjoy open communication and giving audiences unrestricted access to their pages, while others might find social media essential for maintaining or further promoting their careers. Since the creation of sites like Instagram and TikTok, there’s been a substantial rise in independent media creators and collectives who rely on social media to build their careers.
These are the kind of people take advantage of how liberating the internet can be. Blocking features give everyone the means to enjoy the perks of social media use while protecting themselves from harassment.
But those online safety measures might be at risk if they’re not appreciated enough.
Recently, Twitter CEO Elon Musk suggested removing the block button on Twitter in favour of a stronger mute button. The mute button would only remove someone’s tweets from a user’s timeline, without preventing them from commenting on the uninterested user’s tweets or reaching their DMs. While there haven’t been any changes to Twitter announced recently, Musk’s track record when it comes to changing Twitter makes this proposal seem dangerous.
Musk’s proposal is inherently dismissive of the importance of boundary-setting through social media and will set a bad precedent.
Blocking doesn’t just protect users from being annoyed on the internet—it’s a critical safety feature. In a 2014 survey, over 2.5 million Canadians reported having experienced cyber- stalking, a form of harassment that uses social media as a means to intimidate and keep tabs on a victim. Victims of cyberstalking experience harassment received through public comments or DMs. It can be a means of perpetuating real life stalking.
Meanwhile, in 2019 one in four teens experienced some form of cyberbullying, showing that despite being a great tool for connectivity, social media is still used to perpetuate the harms of the physical world.
The ability to use the block button as we see fit is important for online safety and allowing users to have control over their feeds. Twitter is a site with over 360 million active monthly users, but only 1,300 full-time employees. The disparity between these two groups makes it difficult to moderate every issue of harassment that occurs on the site. As such, the blocking feature is one small but important measure allowing users to stay connected while maintaining the security of their feeds and inboxes.
In its current state, Twitter users are granted the agency to make their space safe or comfortable according to their needs and desires. Tech magnates like Musk don’t recognize the risks of allowing all profiles to remain open for the world to see, and as such, have no business compromising the privacy of Twitter users.
Tags
Elon Musk, Social media, Twitter
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