So Elon Musk is Getting Rid of the Block Button

As Twitter becomes a fascist free for all...

Elon Musk has declared that Twitter (which I refuse to call X) will be doing away with the block function. Personally, I have blocked tens of thousands of people on Twitter (mostly using Block Party, when that app was still functional), and I know that my life has been better for it. This move is clearly the product of right-wingers wanting free reign to harass marginalized people and leftists, who until now, could simply shut them out. The block function has long been a snag in Musk’s plan to make Twitter into a rightwing play land. Upon purchasing the site, he had clearly hoped that, with his support, rightwing voices would gain cultural dominance on Twitter.

As I have discussed on Movement Memos, Musk did not buy Twitter for the sake of financial gain. His purchase of the company was an ideological maneuver, aimed at disempowering so-called “woke” voices. The billionaire has long asserted that the “woke mind virus” is a threat to civilization—by which he means, a threat to his late capitalist, longtermist agenda. But Musk’s takeover of Twitter has been a comedy of errors. In addition to stigmatizing blue check verification, Musk has gutted the identity of a trusted brand, and also failed to disempower the communities he loathes. Members of marginalized groups and activist communities who have remained on Twitter have not lost their cultural influence, even as many struggle to navigate the deterioration of the site. Because, the truth is, while Musk can compromise the utility of Twitter for the people he likes, he cannot force anyone to take his rightwing fandom seriously. He cannot steal the influence marginalized thinkers have established over time and hand it off to his sycophantic fanbase, however much he might like to. So now, he is appealing to another rightwing desire: the ability to harass marginalized people and leftists.

One of the reasons that social media sites that cater exclusively to the right will never be as popular as sites like Twitter is that right-wingers want conflict. They want to stalk, harass, argue, threaten and upset people whose ideas and identities offend them. The block function interferes with their ability to do so. So now, even if Musk cannot bestow credibility upon his followers, he is promising them the opportunity to surveil, harass, and direct mob-like energy toward Black people, trans people, Native people, activists, and others who may have eluded them, up to now, on Twitter.

For some Twitter users, this will be the last straw. I will likely remain on Twitter, for now, but I know my days there are numbered, and have been since Musk began wrecking the site. I am starting this Substack since most of you do not follow my Patreon (which will remain active), in an effort to stay in communication with people who are understandably fleeing Twitter. As a disabled person, and as an organizer, Twitter has been invaluable to me, and it should surprise none of us that a billionaire has ultimately sought to unravel the site of so many leftist and organizing gains. As Mariame Kaba and I discuss in Let This Radicalize You, when marginalized people gain ground in commercial spaces (or government-managed spaces, for that matter), adjustments are invariably made to chip away at any advantages we may establish. This has always been the way. Musk’s assault on the communities we have built on Twitter is a particularly vile example of this phenomenon, but it is not the first, and it will not be the last. But the fall of Twitter be the end of our work. We will continue to find one another, wherever we must, and to establish the connections we need in order to share our ideas, thrive, and survive.

As the thought swamp we once called “the bird site” continues to crumble, I will be posting some of my thoughts here, periodically, and I can also be found on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram. You can also still find me on Twitter, for now.