X/Twitter owner Elon Musk announced potential changes to his platform during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference on Wednesday. The most mysterious change Musk is planning is to remove the number of likes and retweets a post receives from users’ feeds. This is an important metric used to determine the popularity and virality of a particular tweet.
daily mail report Elon Musk recently revealed that the company plans to remove the visible display of likes and reposts on posts. With this change, creators will still have access to engagement metrics, but the public will no longer be able to see the number of likes and reposts a particular post has received. This change not only makes it difficult for users to identify popular posts that are going viral, but also makes it difficult for users to identify popular posts that are going viral, as well as to ensure that their tweets are “liked,” meaning they receive more likes and retweets than the original post. It is considered a humiliation among X/Twitter users because it makes it difficult to identify controversial posts, meaning replies that have been made. .
This photo illustration taken on July 23, 2023 in Warsaw, Poland shows a portrait of Elon Musk with an X and Twitter’s lgoso displayed on a mobile device. (Photo credit: Jaap Arrians/NurPhoto, Getty Images)
Musk’s rationale behind this potential change remains unclear, but it is a broader example of his call to turn X/Twitter into an “everything app” that includes not just social media but also banking and shopping features. Consistent with the vision. During the conference, Musk revealed that he is just months away from obtaining a money transfer license in New York, a key step to offering financial services on the platform.
Since acquiring Twitter in a $44 billion deal in October 2022 and rebranding it to X, Musk has aggressively pursued his ambitions to turn the platform into a “super app” akin to China’s WeChat. I’ve been pursuing it. The addition of financial services is an important step towards realizing this goal, allowing X/Twitter to compete with established players in the fintech industry such as PayPal.
Engagement metrics such as likes and reposts (formerly known as retweets) have been a contentious issue for Musk since acquiring the platform. Last year, reports surfaced that Musk allegedly forced engineers to tweak algorithms to increase his postings, sparking internal tensions and concerns about free speech and content moderation.
The possible removal of likes and reposts could be seen as a way to reduce the focus on these metrics, which are often criticized for fostering a culture of validating content based on popularity rather than substance. . Despite this rationale, even mask supporters question the wisdom of removing features that indicate involvement.
we will see. I think this is a bad move.
— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) March 7, 2024
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Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering free speech and online censorship issues.
