Block Party, a startup founded by software engineer and tech diversity advocate Tracy Chou, was among those casualties of the Twitter (now X) API change that nudged it to pivot its entire business earlier this year. At the SXSW conference in Austin this weekend, Chou gave an advance look at what Block Party is working on nowadays with the new product - Privacy Party, intended to simplify the process for people in managing and adjusting their settings for privacy cross different social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, X, and others.

In fact, the original Block Party was built directly on top of the Twitter API to automate blocking bad actors, trolls, harassers, and more. In 2022, after launching initially in 2021, the company took on $4.8 million in seed funding to expand its automation of blocking on more platforms. 

But Twitter's API crackdown was squarely in the sights, and Block Party's operations were immediately impacted. This product is now backburnered and rebranded as Block Party Classic.

Chou touched on the demise of the product at SXSW when saying the Block Party Classic had allowed Twitter users to filter out "all the spam and harassment from their mentions" and made Twitter much more usable and a pleasure while not being a full-on content moderation solution (because the content itself remained on Twitter's platform). Instead, it worked like middleware, she said.

"Sadly, ownership changes on Twitter also meant losing access to the API," Chou explained.

"Regulation that requires open APIs would enable bringing it back, not subject to the whims of an erratic owner or shifting business trends and priorities. And, in general, it would open up markets and consumer choice for social media experiences across so many platforms," she added.

The company is now focused on the future development of Privacy Party given that the future of API regulation is unknown.

The idea of the new product emanated from talking to newsroom security teams who requested more tools to help journalists stay safe online, Chou said.

Journalists sometimes have to face threats like doxing, stalking, and death threats, she observed. In addition to collecting plenty of harassments, journalists, "personal social media creates a lot of surface areas for vulnerability so the security recommendation is always to lock things down.".

Others simply want to tidy up their social profiles, making sure old photos and postings don't haunt them or to make sure that the era it came from, in this case college party photos probably shouldn't pop up for employers.

However, navigating security controls on each of the platforms is time-consuming, painful, and infeasible. Often, the platforms make their user interface and experience unwieldy or relocate the locations of the settings simply to prevent users from isolating valuable information or to appease regulators.

Privacy Party will also act as middleware here, enabling users to work through interfaces with platforms and services to tweak their privacy settings using fewer clicks.

For instance, a demo of Block Party, by Facebook's Head of Product Design Deonne Castaneda at SXSW, showed how it would have taken at least six clicks on Facebook to achieve the right setting to make just one photo album private.

"It was very clear that there was an unmet privacy need for this kind of photo control and protection that saves time and effort," she said.

Privacy Party works like this: It provides users with recommendations for any other social media site.

In beta form, the browser extension would show recommendations based on what the users have set. It'd read through Facebook, or any other social app and learn about your settings in a scan that runs in the background. You'll be leaving your browser tab open for the scan, and you'll be alerted when it's done. Sometimes, 2FA needs will pause the scan. Then you can sift through your settings — like what you are tagged in, or the public nature of your photos and posts, and you'll have the ability to change your settings to be safer or skip altogether, if that is better for you.

Of course, the extension also puts a focus elsewhere that may empower bad actors or stalkers: who can message you, who can see your activity, what apps have access to your data, who can see personal info like your location or hometown, what older content is available and to who, and much more. Privacy Party's extension will update your changes as you update your settings on the fly. It's like having a privacy expert walk you through different settings and give you a report on what needs to be changed and why.

Privacy Party in beta works on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Strava, X, and Venmo, scanning in a minute to eight minutes depending on how many settings need to be locked down. Browsing extension is free to use while in beta.

Each suggestion tells you what's going on with your data and relevant tradeoffs, said Castaneda. They also show controls which you have-control over yet another new level of control that will find and fix privacy settings for you,

Chou wouldn't say when Privacy Party might leave beta but it is free to use, at least for now.