From The Verge: A handful of changes coming to X may be pushing users to its competitor. Bluesky, the decentralized social platform, says it added 500,000 new users in a day this week. The new wave of signups could be related to several controversial changes on X in the last few days.
This week, X users got a pop-up message notifying them that their posts will be visible even to users they’ve previously blocked. Those accounts still won’t be able to interact with their posts, but it’s a substantial change to how the block feature works that could open users up to harassment.
“Today, block can be used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked,” an official X account posted. “Users will be able to see if such behavior occurs with this update, allowing for greater transparency.”
It goes without saying that blocking is a safety issue, particularly for users facing harassment on a platform or people wanting to create distance between themselves and someone else in their life. But Elon Musk has expressed his disdain for blocking, and this change to blocking was teased last month. After users got an explicit notification about it this week, Bluesky wasted no time in using it as a recruitment tool.
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