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| Twitter show taste of its power with blocking-change uproar |
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.
