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X owner and technology entrepreneur Elon Musk has curtailed the use of bold text and other formatting from appearing on timelines due to it being “abused for engagement farming.”
Musk took to his social media platform to give the update on Tuesday (October 1) where he said: “Due to immediate and excessive use of bold font on X, it will be removed from view in the main timeline.
“You will have to click on post details to see anything in bold. My eyes are bleeding.”
Due to immediate and excessive use of bold font on 𝕏, it will be removed from view in the main timeline.
You will have to click on post details to see anything in bold. My eyes are bleeding.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 1, 2024
He then followed up his original post writing: “Same goes for italics and any other formatting. They are being abused for engagement farming.”
This means the standard writing and font will be visible on people’s timelines, but people can click to see more details if they wish to.
This comes just over a year after the change to posts was originally made. It was back in April 2023, just under a year after Elon’s takeover of Twitter/X, when the X Write account said: “We’re making improvements to the writing and reading experience on Twitter!
We’re making improvements to the writing and reading experience on Twitter! Starting today, Twitter now supports Tweets up to 10,000 characters in length, with bold and italic text formatting.
Sign up for Twitter Blue to access these new features, and apply to enable…
— Write (@Write) April 14, 2023
“Starting today, Twitter now supports Tweets up to 10,000 characters in length, with bold and italic text formatting…” At the time, several people responded with queries as to why these features would be used.
Elon Musk continues to speak out on X against engagement farming
Musk has attempted to crack down on engagement farming in the past. This engagement practice is where a user aims to get more interactions on a social media platform to advance their account or links. One of the most popular techniques for this is what is known as ‘rage-baiting’ or ‘click-bait.’
Not one platform has been exempt from this, but it was in April of 2024 when Musk said “Any accounts doing engagement farming will be suspended and traced to source.”
This was largely met by praise by X users. An account called Nicksortor replied: “THIS is what we’ve all been waiting for. Thank you.”
THIS is what we’ve all been waiting for. Thank you.
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) April 19, 2024
Another user, called rawsalerts, said: “Finally, thank God! This is much needed. I’m so tired of seeing clickbait pages and those who put out fake news solely for engagement farming just for clicks, likes, and comments, and solely for profit, nothing else. It’s been cluttering up mine and many others’ feeds with irrelevant content
“But the real question is what does ‘engagement farming’ mean in this context? Like for pages that produce horrendous headlines that didn’t happen or what?”
Featured Image: Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash
