by
Block Party
May 30, 2023
Block Party’s anti-harassment tools for Twitter will be on indefinite hiatus as of May 31. It’s been a privilege to help you set your boundaries for the last four years. Together, we blocked and muted millions of trolls.
We’re heartbroken that we won’t be able to help protect you from harassers and spammers on the platform, at least for now; we fought very hard to stay, and we’re so sorry that we couldn’t make it happen.
In practice, this means when you log into Block Party, everything will be read-only. Lockout filters will no longer run, block lists will no longer process, and you won’t be able to take action on anything in your Lockout Folder. You can read more about the specifics in the FAQs.
Although Block Party’s Twitter product is on hiatus, the company is not. We’ve been hard at work building a new safety product: Privacy Party. It’s a browser extension that reduces your risk of harassment, cyberstalking, impersonation, fraud, spam, and other online attacks with automated privacy playbooks for your social media accounts.
Privacy Party is available in alpha today for existing Block Party users; if you’re not a user, you can join the waitlist now (UPDATE: We're now in beta! Checkout our extension here).
You can get the full backstory and all the details on the new product here.
Unfortunately, most of the safety tools in the Twitter developer ecosystem have shut down. In the meantime, you can replicate some features of Block Party Lockout Folders by adjusting your settings on Twitter.
We recommend that you mute notifications from the following account types to replicate Lockout Filters:
Although this will not serve the purpose of capturing mentions from muted accounts and putting them in a folder for review, you’ll at least avoid the notifications from those accounts.
If you’d like support with this and other important settings updates, try our new browser extension, Privacy Party. It can help to speed up the process of adjusting your settings to reduce your risk of online attacks on Twitter and other social media platforms.
This isn’t the first setback we’ve experienced in our fight to make the internet safer for everyone, and it won’t be the last. It’s also yet another example of why large social media platforms can’t be trusted to do the right thing for user safety without regulation or other meaningful incentives.
If you’re frustrated or concerned that Block Party may no longer exist, please let Twitter know.
One last favor: if you loved Block Party, will you Tweet about it? We want to live in a world where safety tools like Block Party exist for all major social media platforms, and your voice can help us make our case.
