Friend,

Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter/X has been riddled with rollbacks of safety measures and policies that can keep hate and lies at bay. As Musk has reinstated neo-Nazi, white-supremacist, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic accounts — and gutted teams tasked with moderating content — many users have used the block button to protect themselves against personalized attacks and bigotry coming from harmful accounts. And that’s exactly why we must take action to preserve the block feature in response to Musk's proposal to eliminate it.¹

The block button, a critical safety feature on major social-media platforms, enables people to prevent other users from viewing and engaging with their posts. Removing the block button will make it easier for bad actors to target users — disproportionately women, people of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community and global political dissidents — with harassment, hate and other kinds of attacks.

That’s where the Apple App Store and Google Play come in: These companies set terms and conditions that all apps must follow and app developers must comply with to be available on Apple or Google devices.

Apple and Google have the responsibility to ensure that all apps hosted through their app stores empower users to protect themselves from online hate and harassment. We’re calling on Apple and Google to remove Twitter/X from their app stores if Musk gets rid of the block button. Will you add your name to our petition today?

Here’s a quick recap of these companies’ policies as they currently stand:

• Google specifically requires social-media platforms to have a block feature, period.
• Apple’s policies are vague, leaving room for interpretation as to whether users or the platform have the ability to use blocking.

We’re urging Google to enforce its existing terms of service and urging Apple to clarify its terms of service to, at minimum, require a user-centered block feature. This is how we can give targets of abuse the tools they need to better guard against attacks.

So, will you call on Apple and Google to immediately remove Twitter/X from their app stores if Musk eliminates the block button?

Thanks for being with us,

All of us at Free Press
freepress.net

1. “Elon Musk Says X Will Get Rid of Blocking,” The Los Angeles Times, Aug. 18, 2023