Last week was a rough one for Twitter, as they faced an avalanche of negative criticism in response to a recent, unannounced change in the site’s blocking functionality. 

The change made it so that blocking a user would hide all their Twitter activity, but the ‘blocked’ users would still be able to read and interact with the blocker’s account.  This update raised all kinds of issues for users who feared or dealt with harassment and stalking, as it made it easier for malicious users to cause trouble and effectively blinded the victim to what the ‘blocked’ user was up to.

The same day as the update (Thursday, Dec. 12), Twitter completely reversed these new modifications after significant user protest. 

“We never want to introduce features at the cost of users feeling less safe,” Vice President of Product Michael Sippey wrote in a blog post, although he goes on to mention that he still believes the short-lived update would be an improvement.