

Twitter reverts changes to blocking functionality - ssclafani
https://blog.twitter.com/2013/reverting-the-changes-to-block-functionality

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steveklabnik
Kudos, Twitter. I walked past your offices a few hours ago, shaking my head.
It's nice to make it home and see the right thing was done in the end.

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TrevorJ
I'm not familiar with the discussion surrounding this, what was the major
downside to not informing a user that they had been blocked? On the face of
it, it seems like this would make it easier for users to control who sees
their feed, without worrying about the social fallout.

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steveklabnik
There's a lot to this, actually, but the biggest thing is that it made it
significantly easier for harassers to share content from the harassed on their
main account.

Old way:

    
    
      1. Sign out of twitter
      2. Type in url of harassed
      3. find something you want to share
      4. sign back into twitter
      5. tweet link to content
    

With the changes, that turned into

    
    
      1. Click 'retweet.'
    

It may not seem like a whole lot, but trust me, it was. A big component of
that was that because they couldn't follow you, they had to periodically check
back in on a different account. Now, they can just follow you and see your
stuff pop up into their feed right away.

Incentives shape behavior. Nobody thinks that a public tweet is somehow never
going to be seen by someone they've blocked. But barriers to actions do help
reduce the number of those who commit a given action. It's the same way that a
law against murder can't stop someone with a gun from shooting you, but the
law provides a disincentive that causes people to really think about the
hassle before resorting to taking that action.

~~~
TrevorJ
Ah, ok this makes more sense, thanks for explaining. I can see why this would
be troublesome.

~~~
steveklabnik
No problem. I had no idea why it mattered until I had to start taking
advantage of this functionality myself...

