Wired: What Online Communities Can Learn From Twitter’s ‘Block’ Blunder
First, the basics: In case you missed it, Twitter has a feature called “block.” If you block someone on Twitter, that user can no longer interact with you. But Twitter changed the feature from blocking to essentially muting someone, which meant that users wouldn’t see updates from the blocked person — yet they could still follow, favorite, retweet tweets, and so on.
The change punished users, not harassers. That’s why the truth-in-humor analogies ranged from things like calling the police about an attack and being told “Well, what were you thinking, going out in public?” to bullying someone in a classroom and then having the teacher offer the bullied student earplugs (that was one of mine). In short: ridiculous.