Twitter users are blocking Elon Musk in droves after the tech billionaire made big changes to the platform by increasing visibility of his own posts.
Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition has been met with a wide variety of different reactions from netizens even before the purchase was completed in October 2022.
Since then, he’s made a slew of big changes to the popular social media platform, including a major overhaul of its verification system, which users can now purchase via a subscription through Twitter Blue.
However, the latest change enacted by Musk is sparking dissent from users all across the app — and has even sparked a hashtag that’s going viral.
According to a report from Platform, Musk tagged Twitter’s entire engineering force on Slack to address an “urgent” issue at 2:36 Monday morning.
Twitter users urge others to block Elon Musk after new visibility changes
The following day, Twitter users were bombarded with a slew of Musk’s posts on their timelines. As told by Platform, Musk has reportedly implemented a system to increase the visibility of his own posts on the site… and users aren’t happy about it.
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As of Wednesday, February 15, a swath of Twitter users have coined the #blockelon hashtag in protest of this latest update.
#BlockElon before the new "Twitter rules" go into effect.😬 pic.twitter.com/ET6D1BrZE6
— Brown Eyed Susan (@smc429) February 15, 2023
i don’t like to tweet hashtags but i can’t not participate in the most beautiful ones. please #BlockElon today
— ricky montgomery (@rohmontgomery) February 15, 2023
Although the tag boasts an abundance of users who are genuinely upset by the change in visibility of his posts, others are speaking out in support of the Twitter owner.
When Musk gathered Twitter engineers together to resolve the issue, he was reportedly told that visibility on his tweets might be dwindling due to being possibly blocked or muted by many users.
It’s also speculated that the reason why Musk enacted the change was due to a wide disparity in engagement between his Super Bowl post and that of President Joe Biden, who received 29 million impressions as opposed to Musk’s 9.1 million (before he deleted it).
As your president, I’m not picking favorites.But as Jill Biden’s husband, fly Eagles, fly. https://t.co/YtgaEC83Qj
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 13, 2023
This is just the latest incident to spark conversation on the site after Musk privated his account as a “test” despite having over 127 million followers earlier this month.