So Elon Musk has said something on X and upset a lot of people. Who’d have thought?
In this case it’s him reporting that the way blocking works on X will be changing. Specifically, where it has been the case that if a user blocked an account, that account would not be able to view the user’s posts, but that is set to change.
Having read a few articles about this, I appreciate the worry that this is the thin end of the wedge. Musk appears to support the idea of removing most, if not all, aspects of blocking users in the interest of promoting an open discourse.
Perhaps not a great surprise as he strikes me as one of those shouty people who likes to say things without thinking them through and whether they really make sense (I’ve touched on this before in Does Elon Musk Really Think Mexicans Should Govern The US?).
Little more than a month ago, ex-UK PM Liz Truss walked off the stage after a banner displaying a lettuce and the words “I crashed the economy” unfurled behind her. She later accused those behind the prank of “trying to suppress free speech”.1
Like Truss, I consider any attempts to suppress free speech as a worry, but I don’t agree that a lettuce banner counts as an attempt at suppressing free speech. It feels more like she was upset to be the butt of the joke, but if she doesn’t want to be laughed at, choosing to be a politician in a free and open democracy could have been her second worse decision ever.
If the banner had been a threat of violence against her or family members, or even just a photo of her home, I’d hope we all saw that as a genuine attempt at using threats to oppress her and try to scare her into silence. A google-eyed head of iceberg just doesn’t reach the bar for me though.
It’s understandable that some will see Musk’s change as a step towards making X a platform where some users’ free speech is more easily suppressed. And so they will react aggressively against Musk’s plan for fear that it’s actually one early step towards a much worse place. However, so far he’s only suggested this one change to how blocking works and is it really fair for us to complain about things that he may or may not do in the future?
And is what he’s suggesting really so bad?
I am sympathetic to the view that letting blocked users view content may empower those blocked users, but I’m also sympathetic to Musk’s view that blocked users can just register new accounts and use those to view that content.
To me it feels like much of the problem is our own overdeveloped sense of entitlement.
We all of us want our cake and want to eat it, while floating in an infinity pool on an inflatable arm chair that delivers a relaxing automated back massage as we quaff champagne and watch the sunset over the tropical horizon surrounded by the cast of the latest series of Love Island, their oiled naked bodies draped provocatively over the poolside furniture.
And that sense of entitlement is fueled by articles telling us that it’s unreasonable for blocked users to be able to view our content.
In the UK there’s a crime of indecent exposure. If I found myself in court having walked naked through a busy town, would it be a reasonable defence to point out that the whole time I was calling out “do not look at my schlong” through a loud hailer?
Would that be so very different from posting personal information on the web and trying to insist that some web users don’t look at it?
If there are things about us and our lives and our thoughts that we don’t want some people to know, surely posting those things online has to count as an act of rank stupidity.
Am I really being outrageously unreasonable if I suggest that perhaps sometimes a round-robin email or a private WhatsApp group might be a more appropriate channel for some content?
And am I really being outrageously unreasonable if I suggest that sometimes we need to take a bit of personal responsibility?