Musk announces adjustments to X features

Elon Musk said Friday that his social media company X would scrap a feature that allows users to block posts from specific accounts.

“Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” Musk posted, indicating the option would still be available for “direct messages” between users of the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.

The feature is used to restrict interaction with specific accounts on the platform.

Musk has repeatedly cited a desire for free speech as motivating his changes and lashed out at what he sees as the threat posed to free expression by changing cultural sensitivities.

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Since the tycoon bought the social media platform for $44 billion last October, its advertising business has collapsed, in part because of its looser approach to blocking hate speech, and the return of previously banned far-right accounts.

According to the nonprofit organisation the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), hate speech has flourished on the platform.

X has disputed the findings and is suing the CCDH.

In December, Musk reinstated former US president Donald Trump’s Twitter account, although Trump has yet to return to the platform.

The ex-president was banned from Twitter in early 2021 for his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by a group of his supporters seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

X recently reinstated rapper and designer Kanye West around eight months after his account was suspended, according to media reports.

Last fall, West, who now goes professionally by Ye, posted an image that appeared to show a swastika interlaced with a Star of David, and Musk suspended the artist from the platform.