Elon Musk has a habit of throwing out bold ideas for X and not implementing them or, at least, following them slowly. Nearly a year ago, Musk said he planned to eliminate the ability to block users, a development that would have made the site formerly known as Twitter even more hellish. He hasn’t actually done it, and if he ever does, there’s no guarantee that the change will last.
But Musk’s latest plan to remove one of the site’s most famous features has been implemented: Soon, likes will be anonymous to everyone except the person who sent the post and the person who posted the post. pressed the like button. Musk and his engineers say the update aims to encourage free expression. “It’s important to allow people to like posts without being attacked for it! » Musk argues. Its director of engineering says: “Public likes encourage bad behavior. For example, many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be “edgy”, for fear of retaliation from trolls or to protect their public image.
This justification is obviously idiotic. Musk describes hiding the identities of people who like tweets as a way to allow people to adhere to their beliefs. But that’s really not the case; rather, it allows people to indicate their approval of a post (and add to that post’s stats) without having to personally defend anything. This appears to be a move by Musk to address the needs of thin-skinned users who cannot handle social backlash when expressing a belief. Never mind that if they don’t feel comfortable expressing that belief, they just wouldn’t be able to hit the like button.
But what’s actually happening is much more nefarious than Musk anonymizing a key part of the platform to protect the feelings of some viewers. The most likely factor in this change is the embarrassing quagmire of spam, bots, and platform manipulation that fills the void on Musk’s X. And by hiding information about who likes a post, Musk has made it easier for hide his disorder.
On social media, a like serves two functions. The first is to let the platform know what we like or what annoys us so that the company running the platform can serve us the right kind of slop to keep us low and sell us to advertisers. The other is to provide a passive vehicle for expressing appreciation or approval. In this way, likes are a major online community-building tool, like a digital nod or pat on the back. Some people use likes as bookmarks, but Twitter added separate bookmarks in 2018.
Almost all platforms honor their social utility. If I want to see each of the 3,812,516 accounts that liked Kylie Jenner’s most recent Instagram posts, I can do that. If I want to see everyone who liked my friend Bob’s job ad on LinkedIn, I can do that. If I want to see who liked the latest NBA highlight on ESPN’s TikTok, I can do that. This ability is not universal; Instagram can hide who likes a user’s posts, but only if the poster activates the feature. Reddit upvotes are private, even to the person who created the post being upvoted. But anonymity is ingrained in Reddit’s culture; very few posters there even use their real names. It’s important to note that the site has safeguards in place to prevent (although not always successfully) people from using anonymity to spoil the experience for others. Each subreddit has its own moderators, who can come down hard when someone behaves in an antisocial manner.
Guess which social media giant absolutely does it not do you have the infrastructure or desire to prevent antisocial behavior? Musk gutted Twitter’s content moderation team when he took over in fall 2022. In some ways, this was a victory for him, as his massive layoffs and firing of employees saved Twitter millions of dollars. And despite frequent outages and bugs in Musk’s early days, the platform is still standing. Press “publish” and your text will instantly appear on the Internet. The site could even be kind of making money even though its valuation has apparently plunged since Musk took the company private.
But in terms of user experience, Musk has allowed X to deteriorate horribly. The most notable problem is spam. Automated accounts offering crypto activities or DIY pornography were not part of many users’ daily experience before Musk came along. These days, they are practically inescapable in many users’ message replies and send direct messages with reckless abandon.
An adjacent problem is that of advertising. Blue-chip advertisers started fleeing as soon as Musk came on board. Some have returned, but X’s owner often finds new ways to repel them. By late 2023, Musk’s personal anti-Semitic remarks and those he allowed to appear alongside advertising content caused more companies to remove him from the platform. X appears to have fewer frequent users today than before Musk’s reign, so the advertisers still on the site are preaching to a smaller congregation.
These failures play out in a way that should have made protecting the identities of accounts that like posts attractive. Most of the ads currently running on X are just terrible.
Before Disney removed advertising from the platform, you may have come across an ad for a new Marvel movie. At this point, you are more likely to receive an ad for a strangely named crypto product that you have never heard of in your life. You are less likely to engage in this than dead Pool, and the return on investment for X’s partners is likely to decrease. But if You you didn’t need to commit? What if accounts of dubious origin, without regular people behind them, could fulfill this commitment? This is a little easier to achieve when the general public can’t see who is behind the accounts that are mining the numbers.
The same incentive exists for all kinds of hacks. It turns out that foreign governments (even U.S. allies) have used X to wage fake influence campaigns against members of Congress. It’s easier to hide these actions when most people have no idea who is actually interacting with the posts. Likewise, any motivated politician or pundit with a point to make will now find it easier to make it appear as if an inflated number of people on the Internet support their ideas. Twitter likes were never a great form of resistance, but with their public visibility, they were something of a barrier against bad behavior.
Musk has every reason to lower this barrier. Yet the main argument against trusting him is that his most frequent area of dishonesty since purchasing Twitter has been manipulation of the platform. When Musk first closed his deal for Twitter in spring 2022, he cited “defeating spambots” as his motivation. When he attempted to withdraw from the agreement, he paradoxically argued that it was because there were too many inauthentic accounts, exactly what he said he wanted to defeat when he made the deal. When it put blue verification badges on sale, it presented them as a way to guarantee users’ authenticity. This too was ridiculous, as the new verification system made Twitter an impossible place to get reliable information. Hiding who likes a post is just another step to make it harder to filter content. garbage.