X’s controversial changes to blocking and AI training sees half a million users leave for rival Bluesky – which then crashes under the strain

Elon Musk’s latest changes for X are driving more users away – not exactly a surprise, granted – and many of them are flocking to rival social media outlet Bluesky. So many made the switch, in fact, it led to Bluesky briefly going down due to the volume of incoming new users.

The central move initiated by X that made the headlines for driving migration away from Musk’s platform is a change to the way the ‘Block’ button works. This was actually announced back in September, but is officially being implemented now (well, it’ll be in place ‘soon’ we’re told).

It means that going forward, X users who you have blocked will still be able to view your (public) posts – though they won’t be able to engage with them in any way (from replies to liking and so forth).

This is problematic for obvious reasons, in terms of enabling stalkers and trolls who will still be able to view the posts of an account that has blocked them, when previously this wasn’t the case. In the past, blocking meant that the blocked user couldn’t see any posts (or anything at all, save for a message telling them that they’ve been blocked), but soon, this will change.

As The Independent reports, this confirmation of the move to relax what blocking means led to a flood of departures from X to Bluesky, a decentralized take on X that was the brainchild of former co-founder and CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey.

Bluesky posted to say it had in excess of 100,000 new users inside 12 hours following the announcement by X, after the rival network highlighted the fact that its block function stops those who are blocked from viewing any posts.

Such was the volume of disgruntled defectors that Bluesky actually went down for a couple of hours, with those fleeing X noting that they couldn’t sign up (and for that matter, users couldn’t even login). Down Detector recorded a server outage lasting for a couple of hours, though this has now calmed down to a few scattered reports, and normal service appears to have resumed for Bluesky.

In an update, Bluesky noted that it has now gained half a million new users in the past day.

There’s another reason that some folks are rapidly exiting from X stage left (and right, and indeed center, clambering over the audience, it would seem), and that’s a change to X’s privacy policy.

As TechCrunch reports, the new policy includes an update that allows third-party collaborators to use content on X to train their AI models – unless the user opts out. This is a notable extension of the reach of AI training on X, which has so far only been used to train Musk’s own Grok AI (unless users opt out, again).

Analysis: You mystify me

There’s been a strong reaction to both moves, particularly the blocking change.

Let’s start with the AI side of the equation, though, and what’s going on there. Artists are not at all happy about the possibility of their content being used in AI training – for which they read as being ‘stolen’ effectively – but there is a choice to opt out (although we don’t yet know where that option will lie).

Still, clearly many folks feel this is an ominous switch in direction for X, and are voting with their feet to make a point. Certainly, it should be an opt in rather than opt out decision, but often this is a concern glossed over in the tech industry for obvious reasons.

To be fair to Musk, X isn’t the only social media platform heading down this path, of course – Reddit is at the head of the pack in terms of monetizing in the AI sphere.

The switch in blocking policy is a truly mystifying one, though, and seemingly part of Musk’s self-destructive side when it comes to his social media property. We can’t think of a good reason why this has been enacted, save for… nope. We just can’t think of one.

For X’s part, the main argument in favor of the change is that “block can be used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked,” and so the ability to still view the posts of a blocked account means greater transparency in terms of detecting such instances.

But that does not square up at all, not even remotely, with wider and far more pressing concerns about blocked people now being able to act in harmful ways towards those who have blocked them.

Diluting blocking in this way is undeniably going to make life better for stalkers, unhinged trolls and folks who might harass other denizens of X for kicks, and as many have rightly pointed out, there are genuine online safety concerns here.

While a blocked person may not be able to repost in theory, there is nothing to stop them from taking a screenshot of a post, and sharing that on X (or elsewhere). Or more broadly, there’s nothing preventing the blocked person from using info from the visible posts of the person they might be harassing or stalking.

Surely when you weigh up these two factors – the rights of the blocked, and rights of the blocker – on the scales of worry, the tipping that’s going on is severe.

Another reason raised for doing away with full-blocking is that it’s easy to get around by creating another dummy account – but not everyone will go to those lengths (far from it, we’d imagine), and so this is only a partial point of argument at best.

All in all, at the very least, isn’t some sort of compromise called for here? Perhaps in the form of some sort of full block option that could be left in.

The reaction to the move has been entirely negative, and hopefully, X and Musk are taking that on board.

Bluesky is certainly capitalizing on this, not just reinforcing that it offers full blocking capabilities as mentioned, but also more besides (the ability to “subscribe to block lists maintained by users you trust” for example).

Currently, Bluesky has half a million new recruits for its platform, as mentioned, and it’s currently trending on X with over 200K posts. The talk is now turning to how the new philosophy on blocking might end up with the X app being blocked itself from Google and Apple’s stores.

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