Elon Musk’s social network X is exploring a new feature that would allow users to block others from direct messaging them, but a way that’s separate from the account blocking feature. Currently, when you block an account, they can’t engage with you through public posts or direct messages (DMs). With the new feature, the company wants to separate how blocks work with personal messaging and public posting.
Yesterday, a few app sleuths published screenshots of blocking an account from DMing. Musk quoted one of these posts and said, “DMs are being decoupled from public posting so that if you all want to use this platform for messaging but not post publicly, you can do so.”
This phrasing is strange because even with the current iteration of direct messages, users can choose not to post and still engage with other users through DM. Another possibility here might be a separate app, but it’s not clear that’s what Musk is saying.
In the past, he has talked about building out DMs in a way to “Superset Signal,” with features like end-to-end encryption. It’s possible, then, that separating how public blocks and DM blocks work is an initial step towards making X a more robust messaging app for those who don’t want to engage with its public social network.
DMs have undergone other upgrades recently, as well. Earlier this month, the company released a feature that lets you edit a message for someone, for instance.
As has been the case with a lot of features on X lately, the DM blocking feature is in development, but there are no details about a public rollout. X no longer replies to request for comment under Musk.