Responding quickly to negative user feedback, Twitter on Thursday rolled back the controversial policy change announced Thursday that would allow users block others on the micro-blogging site.

Twitter on early Thursday had tweaked its blocking mechanism to allow unwanted Twitter followers re-tweet, like or peer at messages in public accounts of users who block them.

But, a barrage of negative feedback forced the company to roll back the change. Twitter's Michael Sippey said that the company believed that the change was not ideal, largely because of the retaliation by blocked users against blocking users.

Announcing the decision to revert the change, Sippey said, "Earlier today, we made a change to the way the `block' function of Twitter works. We have decided to revert the change after receiving feedback from many users - we never want to introduce features at the cost of users feeling less safe."

However, Sippey declared that any blocks that users had previously instituted would still remain in effect. The change was reverted just hours after the implementation of the change.

Twitter CEO Dick Costola had initially tried to address the barrage of criticism by claiming that the change was made in response to requests by victims of abuse.