Erasing Digital Autonomy

Every move Twitter leadership seems to make under the Elon regime is about removing autonomy. It’s not positioned that way. It’s not like executives wake up and mutter, “I’m going to remove basic functions that give people control over their own experience.” Or, at least, I don’t think Elon does but, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have never met Elon Musk and certainly have no idea what he says to himself when he wakes up. It’s his actions that hit on that destruction of autonomy mantra again and again. Take the most recent news floating around: potentially removing the block button. 

This is not the first time that rumors about Elon wanting to remove the block button have appeared. Those murmurs are practically traceable back to when he took over the company. The difference this time around is how Elon is apparently thinking about the term block. As he said on X, the move would still allow people to prevent a blocked account from engaging with them (ie, they can't reply to you), but those who are blocked will still be able to see a post. I don't have to tell you how the ability for someone blocked to see a post can, in turn, lead to forms of engagement (such as dog whistling) that the block button was supposed to prevent.

It's also not hard to see how removing parts of a blocking feature can spin out of control extremely quick. In all of the asinine moves that have been made since Elon entered X, getting rid of the ability to block someone goes against everything he preaches he once loved about Twitter. X is the “world’s town square” where thoughtful (hmm) debate (hmmm) occurs, elevating some of the greatest thinkers (hmmmm) of our time. The beauty of a town square, however, is that people have the option to show up, they have the option to leave and, if they so wish, they have the option to walk away from a conversation. That’s fundamentally what a block button does. Without even highlighting the obvious benefits to blocking — harassment prevention, muting spam accounts, physical safety, etc — and focusing on what matters to the site’s owner, you can not hold a town square and force everyone to listen to anyone. 

Town squares celebrated community, and community was a foundation built around a shared belief in the benefits of autonomy. Artisans sold goods, musicians performed, news of the day was shared, and yes, the town square “provided a platform for public discourse and debate, allowing citizens to exchange ideas, listen to the views of others, and engage in respectful dialogue,” as described by the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy. If at any time those engagements started to borderline harassing or abusive, or if some sales person from the town square followed you around screaming about a deal too good to pass up, or an ex stalked you while demanding you take them back, the person had the right to leave. 

Removing the block button on a platform like X, which can be a town square much in the same way that any digital platform is theoretically capable of being a town square, puts the onus on the person being followed to remove themselves from the equation (ie, deleting an account) rather than simply getting away from the botherer in question (leaving the conversation). Elon’s version of a town square is one where select freedoms, already being trimmed down by measures beyond our own control, like algorithmic feeds that bring people to us rather than seeing those we seek out, is less aligned with the squares that helped form our democratic institutions.

Just consider the physical actions involved with your day-to-day spent online compared to how it used to be two decades ago. You scroll. You swipe. You tap. You no longer surf, dig into, or chat.

I’m not going to spend 1,000 words ranting about the potentially new terrible policy. It simply reads to me like someone who’s upset that he and his friends are getting blocked by people they may dislike but who they feel like they should be able to address. I do want to use the potential erasure of a block button to discuss our case of disappearing autonomy in a transitional era when autonomy in our digital lives is just as important as the awarded autonomy in our physical world. 

Back in the earliest days of the internet, it felt like the control we could exert over our time spent in cyberspace was split 80-20. This was a step up from our own lives where control felt closer to 50-50. Back before the internet was really about making a profit (unless you were Netscape or Time Warner), when the entire goal was to bring unlimited terabytes of information to people regardless of their citizenship, social status, or economic standing, it was easier to assert autonomy over leisure. The internet was less about satisfying basic needs and more about celebrating any whim. When you don’t have to worry about basic necessities, you can focus entirely on building out an experience that you want based on what you seek out and connections you make. 

The 20% that couldn’t be avoided was advertising. The oxygen that keeps our world running, ads went from being unavoidable on billboards when you were driving down the highway and watching Sunday Night Football to being unavoidable at the top of the webpages we visited.  The earliest viruses were designed to display popup ads on your page, and the earliest big winners of the internet age were those who could more confidently and directly place ads in front of eyeballs. So long as the internet has been around so has advertising — anywhere people are spending time and looking at a screen is perfect hostage taking scenarios for advertisers. This was acceptable, though, because it afforded the freedom of autonomy elsewhere. 

Everything started to change the more that websites became apps and overseers of those apps disincentivized seeking out experiences to bring experiences to people based on preconceived notions of what they wanted derived from data collected every single second. Just consider the physical actions involved with your day-to-day spent online compared to how it used to be two decades ago. You scroll. You swipe. You tap. You no longer surf, dig into, or chat. Apps are designed to eliminate the art of browsing in order to reduce friction between opening your phone and being met with entertainment. The faster you’re watching, the faster ads reach you, the more profit grows. From the minute we open our phones to the minute we put them away, we sacrifice autonomy over what we see. We submit ourselves to reduced autonomy to chase more instantaneous dopamine hits.

It’s this reality that underlines just how vital those little bouts of autonomy we still cherish are, and that we need to continue spending time in these spaces. Seemingly little things like a block button are the difference between the last bit of online autonomy we have today and total control over our encounters and experiences by those pushing buttons and pulling levers behind the scenes. These transitions happened so fast that it’s like an extreme case of shock. We still haven’t felt it, but the thaw is beginning to wear off and that tingling sensation is poking through. The more dramatic the erasure of our choices, the faster said thaw occurs. 

Now, there’s always a chance that Elon and his team decide not to remove the block button. I actually tend to believe they won’t. But it’s only a matter of time before something else is removed with the goal of creating a more specific experience that is dictated by a team chasing profits and incentivized by advertising sales teams. Designed not with user control in mind but platform performance. Our autonomy is constantly being sacrificed for performance and, perhaps in that way, our online world is starting to reflect our reality more and more each day. At least for now we can still walk away from someone who annoys us in real life. Hopefully that remains true on sites like X and TikTok. But in the battle between user autonomy and platform performance, I’m likely to bet on the value of the latter each time in the eyes of almost any executive. It’s what shareholders demand.