News

Blocking Users Is About To Get Tougher On X

The latest move could be about increasing engagement, though it’s hard to ignore the fact that the 2024 US presidential election is looming.

Published

2 years ago

September 24, 2024

Nour Nasir

blocking users is about to get tougher on x

According to the ever-controversial Elon Musk, social media platform X is about to lose its block feature. The CEO confirmed the upcoming change in a reply to Nima Owji, the developer who first reported the news.

High time this happened.

The block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, public post.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 23, 2024

Since its inception when the site was known as Twitter, the block feature has allowed users to prevent unwanted views and engagement on their public posts. However, when the latest update kicks in, those blocked accounts will once again be able to view all public posts.

Although Musk originally threatened to remove the block feature entirely, the latest tweak to X won’t go that far and will instead mean that blocked users will only be able to view public posts, not engage with them via likes, replies, or reposts.

Also Read: How To Find & Cancel Pending Instagram Requests

Musk’s confirmation of the upcoming changes has been alarming to many users who have faced trolling or stalking on the platform. It will also now be trivially easy to screen-capture and repost content from accounts that were previously invisible due to blocks.

News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.