Elon Musk has made lots of changes to what used to be known as Twitter since he bought it—including the app's name itself.
But the newest change he's trying to make isn't going over well. Musk wants hashtags to be a thing of the past.
Hashtags have been a major part of the X/Twitter experience practically since the app's inception. But Musk says they're not just over, they're "ugly."
Musk's declaration came after an X user asked the app's Grok AI tool if they should use hashtags, and the tool said not to. Musk firmly agreed.
Grok pithily responded that hashtags are "about as useful as a screen door on a submarine," and Musk quickly responded:
"Please stop using hashtags. The system doesn’t need them anymore and they look ugly."
The thing is though, hashtags are still very useful—on lots of apps, but perhaps especially on X, as a way of organizing and searching information, especially as algorithms seem to be making tech platforms' search functions less and less precise.
Hashtags are also just sort of endemic to the culture of the app too—or what's left of it, anyway, since Musk has basically turned it into a far-right cesspool.
To say that X users were absolutely not on board with Musk's hashtag hottake would be an understatement.
Users immediately began trolling Musk for his hashtag advice with—you guessed it—tons and tons of hashtags.
Others pointed out that Musk's platform itself doesn't seem to have gotten his memo—not only did people have screenshots of the app's system recommending they use hashtags, but they also showed posts from X CEO Linda Yaccarino using them too. Oops.
Musk may have lost the hashtag battle, but he'll surely find some other new way to bend the app ever more to his will.
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