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

VaselineOctober 20, 2024

8 4 minutes read

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

Elon Musk’s latest changes to So many made the switch, it even led to Bluesky briefly going offline due to the large number of incoming new users.

The central move initiated by This was actually announced back in September, but is now being officially implemented (well, it will be in effect ‘soon’, we’re told).

It means that

This is problematic for obvious reasons, as stalkers and trolls can still view the messages from an account that has blocked them, while previously this was not the case. In the past, blocking meant that the blocked user couldn’t see any messages (or anything at all, except a message saying he or she was blocked), but soon this will change.

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

Bluesky reported that it had more than 100,000 new users within 12 hours of X’s announcement, after the rival network highlighted that its blocking feature prevents those who are blocked from viewing messages.

The number of disgruntled defectors was so high that Bluesky was effectively grounded for a few hours, with those who fled X finding themselves unable to log in (and besides, users couldn’t even log in). Down Detector recorded a server outage that lasted a few hours, but 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 some people are quickly leaving the X stage left (and right, and even in the middle, clambering over the audience, it seems), and that’s a change in X’s privacy policy.

As TechCrunch reports, the new policy includes an update that will allow remote workers to use content on X to train their AI models – unless the user opts out. This is a notable expansion of the scope of AI training on X, which so far has only been used to train Musk’s own Grok AI (unless users opt out again).

Elon Musk and Twitter

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Analysis: You baffle me

There has been a strong reaction to both moves, especially the blocking change.

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

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

To be fair to Musk, X isn’t the only social media platform going this route, of course – Reddit is leading the way when it comes to AI monetization.

However, the switch in blocking policy is truly baffling and seems to be part of Musk’s self-destructive side when it comes to his social media properties. We can’t think of a good reason why this was introduced, other than… no. We just can’t think of one.

As for monitoring means greater transparency in detecting such cases.

But that doesn’t correspond at all, not even remotely, with the broader and much more pressing concerns that blocked people can now act in harmful ways against those who blocked them.

Weakening the ban in this way will undeniably make life better for stalkers, out-of-control trolls and people who might harass other residents of X for fun, and as many have rightly pointed out, there are real online safety concerns here.

While a blocked person may not be able to repost in theory, there’s nothing stopping them from taking a screenshot of a post and sharing it on X (or elsewhere). Or more broadly, nothing prevents the blocked person from using information from the visible posts of the person he or she may be harassing or stalking.

When you weigh these two factors – the rights of the blocked and the rights of the blocked – on the scale of concerns, the tilt that is underway is serious.

Another reason for doing away with the complete ban is that it’s easy to get around this by creating another dummy account – but not everyone will go that far (on the contrary, we’d imagine), and so this is only a partial point. of argumentation at its best.

All in all, isn’t there at least some kind of compromise needed? Perhaps in the form of some kind of full block option that can remain in it.

The reaction to the move was completely negative, and hopefully X and Musk will take that to heart.

Bluesky certainly capitalizes on this, reinforcing that it not only offers full blocking capabilities as mentioned, but much more (for example, the ability to subscribe to block lists maintained by users you trust).

Currently, as mentioned, Bluesky has half a million new recruits to its platform, and it is currently trending on X with over 200,000 posts. The conversation now turns to how the new blocking philosophy could lead to the X app itself being blocked from Google and Apple stores.

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VaselineOctober 20, 2024

8 4 minutes read

Vaseline

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