Mar 7, 2024,01:29am EST
Elon Musk announced on Wednesday that X will soon conceal metrics for reposts, likes, and replies from the timeline to enhance its appearance, marking another significant design adjustment for the social media platform. This decision comes after last year’s alteration in how X displays links to news articles.
KEY FACTS
During a Morgan Stanley event, Musk mentioned X’s consideration of hiding these metrics, noting that they visually clutter the content on the platform. Responding to a follower on the social platform, Musk confirmed that this change is “definitely happening.” He clarified that the timeline will still show view counts, a feature introduced after he assumed control of the social platform, serving as a proxy for other metrics. The suggestion Musk responded to implied that the hidden metrics would remain accessible by clicking on a post.
KEY BACKGROUND
This isn’t the first time Musk has discussed removing metrics from X’s home page. In a subscriber-only post last year, he expressed plans to eliminate “all the action buttons with their superfluous interaction counts from the main timeline,” except for the view count, which would be visible upon tapping a post. Musk aimed to improve readability with this change. Last year, Twitter implemented a major design change that removed headlines from posts linking to news articles, replacing them with clickable lead images.
Musk criticized the old cards as ugly and claimed they made his eyes bleed. X partially rolled back this change later, overlaying headlines on top of an article’s lead image when a news link was shared. The proposed design change could potentially eliminate the concept of a “ratio” on X, where posts receiving significantly more replies than reposts are considered “ratioed.” Musk himself has experienced being “ratioed” on the platform, and this change may impact how users engage with content.
NEWS PEG
Likes and repost counts on the timeline often serve as indicators of a tweet’s popularity or engagement level. However, they have also been used to mock posts deemed unpopular by “ratioing” them. The proposed design change may alter the dynamics of engagement on the platform, requiring users to click on individual posts to view metrics.