X is working on a separate blocking layer for DMs

Elon Musk’s social network X is exploring a feature to let users block users from DMing them separately from the account block. Currently, when you block an account, they can’t engage with you through public posts or chat messages. With the new feature, the company wants to separate personal messaging and public posting layers.

Yesterday, a few app sleuths published screenshots of blocking an account from DMing. Musk quoted one of these posts and said, “DMs are being decoupled from public posting so that if you all want to use this platform for messaging but not post publicly, you can do so.”

This phrasing is strange because even with the current iteration of direct messages, users can choose not to post and still engage with other users through DM. The only possibility here might be a separate app, but it’s hard to understand what Musk is saying. In the past, he has talked about building out DMs in a way to “Superset Signal,” with features like end-to-end encryption.

As has been the case with a lot of features on X lately, the DM block feature is in development, but there are no details about a public rollout.

Earlier this month, the company released a feature that lets you edit a message for someone.