Don't get me wrong I don't think it's a bad idea per se. Though the picture it creates is not too positive. Fighting heated up communications with a "comm stop" creates the feeling of being pushed to hard, being tired of talking or in the worst case abusing ones power to silence critics. I unterstand it, but as Malachy said, it should have happened earlier.
The lesson i draw from all this is once again, that people obviously are often unable to find a healthy way of interpersonal communication in social media or the Internet in general. Lack of facial expression and gestures leads to misunderstandings, but instead of asking further, assumptions are made leading to even more mistaken interpretations.
So yes I understand the move, it's just sad it has come so far.