Twitter Kills Changes To Follower Blocking After User Backlash

As with any social network on the internet, a fair amount of trolling and harassment goes on with Twitter. One of the only ways to stop a troll's harassment on social networks is to block that user from being able to follow your account. Traditionally blocking a person on Twitter meant that they could no longer see tweets or interact with the accounts that blocked them.

Yesterday Twitter rolled out some confusing changes to how people can block other users and the changes resulted in a huge backlash from users. The changes Twitter made allowed people that were blocked to continue to see tweets and interact with the account that blocked them.

The angry outcry from Twitter users was so fierce and swift that Twitter undid the changes less than a day after rolling them out. By reverting to the old blocking rules, blocked users can no longer follow an account once they are blocked by the account holder.

Twitter said that it decided to repeal the changes after feedback from "many users" and that it didn't want to roll out features that made its users feel unsafe. Twitter also pointed out that any blocks Twitter users had made before the change are still in effect. Twitter maintains that the changes to how blocking worked was an attempt to make it where the person blocked didn't know they had been blocked in an effort to prevent retaliation by the blocked person.

SOURCE: BBC