Meh
If they're public xeets,the blocked user would only need to view them without logging in (when it works) or create another account - not a great deterrence
Elon Musk has confirmed a change to X that will allow blocked users to view public posts. The change will mean that if a user blocks someone, their public tweets would still be visible by that account. However, the blocked account would not be able to engage with the post. It's always been possible to view someone's tweets if …
You can certainly still view posts on Twitter without being logged in if you go on there from a web browser, as ive just managed to view the Elon 'Pedo Guy' Musk and Royal Mail Twitter accounts and scrolled back over their posts going back years and clicked on a few videos and images without it forcing me to login.
FYI This was using Firefox with Ublock Origin installed, so maybe it was blocking something that would have been forcing me to sign in should I had visited the site without Ublock running.
You can certainly still view posts on Twitter without being logged in
Only the post, none of the comments.
I wish he'd made good on his threat to block showing posts at all if you're not logged in. I think he actually did that for a few days, but backed off when he realized it would cause a lot of people to leave Twitter as it would no longer be a useful place for them to distribute "news" and such. Because people like me would never login to read anything, limiting the audience of anything posted there to the small universe of Twitter users.
IIRC that happened for a while before he bought it too, or I may be misremembering the timeline. There was certainly a period though where you couldn't see anything without logging in, and before that you couldn't click on "show more" without logging in, nor could you see more than the top 5 comments etc.
From the article:
However, the decision to alter how blocking works again could concern account holders and privacy campaigners.
It should be clear by now to even the most casual of observers that Herr Muskrat doesn't give a flying fuck about account holders or privacy campaigners. He, much like his newfound bromance tRump, only cares about stroking his overly-inflated ego.
Seems to me that this is YAN good reason to un-ass the platform. Folks, you can get your daily dose of cat videos and hate speech elsewhere.
Chances are that all the good folks who would be upset by this have already un-assed the platform, leaving only those who can't be arsed to realize they're being played.
the very best thing to do with Twitter/X and Arsebook and all their ilk is to NOT HAVE ACCOUNTS THERE. They can't follow you around if you're not there.
Hint: I don't have accounts on anything even close to antisocial media except here on El Reg and over on Linksys, and I haven't posted anything on my Linksys account in years. Well, I do have USENET access, but killfiles work there. The remaining idiot who follows me around really hates it when I point out why he got booted from the Royal Navy 40 years ago and has, for the most part, stopped. Every now and again he starts again, and I remind him. He's not real bright even for a self-hating raging queen who really likes Big Black Men in certain ways despite being exceedingly racist.
Ad-blockers, NoScript, and Privcy Badger will block a lot of the targeted ads; there's a reason why I use FireFox. Not having an account will keep me far away from them and untouchable by the morons infesting antisocial media. Especially if the only name they have is a handle adopted years ago on usenet. As David the idiot noted in the original post found out, there are lot of WolfFans on usenet; he once jumped on the wrong one and it was very amusing to watch him try to extract himself from the mess. Especially as that particular WolfFan was gay and I went way out of my way to let him know of Our David's attitudes. David got the clan called in on him. It was beautiful.
Oh my sweet summer child, if only it were that easy.
You use DNS? an ISP? You have relatives and friends with Whatspp on thier phones or who use social media themselves, you have a mobile phone (let alone 'smart')? Need to use unicorn sites that won't work without JS?
You are still very much tracked. Much as we may catch a murderer by his 3rd cousin's DNA. You need to make that medical appointment or book that ticket on some bloated, badly written wordpress site which uses google fonts.
The only way to win is not to play.
The main reasons people block others is for their own safety/privacy. This will also allow trolls to mass report people they disagree with.
For safety you would have deleted your twitter account when musky took control. If there is one troll in the room, then it is musky, who disagrees with everybody except himself(*).
(*) And I'm not even sure he agrees with himself with his self-contradictory ways.
Its only good for a few retro computer/game posts and WHS_carpet (about WHSmith Carpets, originally). But other than that, its shit under his watch.
The point however is, if you're a politician using it, then what you say is public record, so even if you've blocked someone from replying they should still be able to read the bollocks you post on Twitter.
Careful...
Elon SKUM might block your access because you called it Twitter. He hates that with a vengeance. He spent all that $$$$ on the shitfest and then more to rebrand it 'X' but people still refuse to call it 'X'.
He, like his master Trump has lost the plot. All the sane part of the world can hope for is that DJT is burnt at the election stakes like Guy Fawkes on 5th Nov. Then we might hear less of Trump and Musk.
As an aside, if Trump was elected, won't Elon the brilliant be sent back to S Africa under his mass deportation scheme? [ducks to avoid incoming]
If you block somebody, fine, they can't engage with what you post. No retweets, no comments, etc. If you don't want that person to see your xitts at all, you get into the realm of having to approve everybody individually. It's like the general purpose computer that can run any program except the ones The Man doesn't want you to run. The 3D printer that can print any shape except......
Others here have pointed out that the best thing to do is to delete your account. As far as I can tell, never having used it, is that the only users left are polical journos and politicos. If everyone did this then the problems assiciated with his latest brain fart - blocking in this case - would go away.
"I don't know anything about this thing, and here's what I reckon it is," is both a remarkably ignorant, and also arrogant position to take.
I know plenty of people who still use Twitter (none of them call it X). There are still communities there that are separate from the toxic cesspit that is the whole, but they are being eroded. I acknowledge that I am missing out on some stuff by no longer having an account, but quite frankly, I'd had enough of Elmo's shit, and I decided that, on balance, I'd rather not be there.
There are ways** to strip most tracking from twitter links, if for some reason you really need to see what's going on. In the last three years I have used in 5 times, always regretted it, and the time between relapses is increasing with exponential backoff so I hope I'll be ok.
But perhaps it would be better for humanity if, similar to cigarettes and alcohol*, there'd be a huge health warning on any twitter page, warning about the inevitable corruption of your soul and the likely increase for antidepressants in the weeks to follow.
Wikipedia specializes in screamy ads, so perhaps some code can be reused there.
**https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends?tab=readme-ov-file#twitter
*I am not making the claim that this is effective. But if ads are the accepted form of the internet, then we may as well try to leverage it for a hopeful good end.