Twitter gets taste of its power with blocking-change uproar - San Francisco Chronicle ~ Electronic Gadgets

The power of Twitter was turned against the company this week after a furious online backlash caused the San Francisco microblogging company to quickly reverse a change in the way members could block unwanted followers.

"Earlier today, we made a change to the way the 'block' function of Twitter works," Twitter Product Vice President Michael Sippey wrote in a blog post late Thursday. "We have decided to revert the change after receiving feedback from many users - we never want to introduce features at the cost of users feeling less safe. Any blocks you had previously instituted are still in effect."

Twitter said it made the earlier change to protect members from unwanted harassment and threats. Before, when a Twitter member blocked a follower, that member could no longer see the person's tweets. Twitter changed that function to allow the blocked follower to still see, favorite and retweet messages from the member's timeline. But the Twitter member who instituted the block could no longer see the activities of the person he or she blocked.

Critics took to Twitter almost immediately, arguing that the company had made things worse. And just as Twitter has been used in revolutions against governments, critics tweeted dissent marked with phrases like "#restoretheblock" aimed at the company.

That petition was started within an hour of Twitter's announcement on Change.org by feminist Zerlina Maxwell, who soon had hundreds of signers:

"This is a huge and very serious problem for people, like me, who have received repeated rape and death threats on Twitter on a fairly consistent basis," she wrote. "Twitter is no longer a safe space. As a public person who uses the medium for my work, I am very concerned because stalkers and abusers will now be able to keep tabs on their victims, and while there was no way to prevent it 100 percent before, Twitter should not be in the business of making it easier to stalk someone."

Kashmir Hill, who writes the Not-So Private Parts blog for Forbes, wrote that "blocking someone on Twitter now actually means you're just muting them. It's the digital equivalent of plugging your ears; they can shout, but you won't hear them."

After Twitter executives rushed into a meeting in the company's Market Street headquarters - according to one report - Sippey posted Twitter's about-face, but noted the underlying problem remained unresolved:

"In reverting this change to the block function, users will once again be able to tell that they've been blocked," he wrote. "We believe this is not ideal, largely due to the retaliation against blocking users by blocked users (and sometimes their friends) that often occurs. Some users worry just as much about post-blocking retaliation as they do about pre-blocking abuse. Moving forward, we will continue to explore features designed to protect users from abuse and prevent retaliation."

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