X Won’t Be In a position to Remove its Block Functionality, Despite Elon’s Statements

That is just one other attention-grabbing exercise from Elon, so I don’t want to provide it any air.

But to make clear, when Elon Musk says this:

That’s actually not going to occur.

Why?

Because it might violate each the Apple and Google Play Store guidelines, which might then render X ineligible to be hosted on either, effectively killing the app.

Which guidelines?

This one for the Apple Store:

And this clause for Google Play:

You would possibly have the ability to argue that the wording of the Apple policy is somewhat vague, in that it doesn’t clearly stipulate whether individual users or the service must have the ability to dam users. However the inference is evident, and it’s not up for interpretation in any respect within the Play Store listing.

After all, Elon has seemingly been allowed to bend such rules up to now, on naming conventions for apps, and on content moderation, for instance. So he may, possibly, have the ability to control them again, though this really looks as if a step too far, which neither Apple nor Google would have the ability to permit.

Why would Elon even need to remove blocks?

Since it reduces ad impressions, by limiting content exposure. There’s really not much other logic, though Elon has also complained up to now that supporting block lists is problematic for X’s systems.

Possibly that’s the motivation, possibly not. It’s not entirely clear.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino has since gone into damage control, in an try and soften Elon’s statement.

But I don’t see any pathway to this actually happening, given the stated App Store rules.

So that is more of Elon firing off takes without considering, which helps to get him more attention, and possibly X as well.

But no, this isn’t going to occur in point of fact.

And here I’m playing along, and feeding into the Musk media machine.