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Billionaire and entrepreneur Elon Musk has been trending a lot recently. His week to the Eagle Pass border last week went viral prompting questions and conversations about the US border crisis. Now, Musk is trending for stating that he would remove all action buttons, leaving only the view count appearing on the posts on X (formerly Twitter) timelines.
Elon Musk's October 6 tweet about the slashing of action buttons went viral and was shared as screenshots by many media outlets. A majority of the platform's users were not happy with the newly proposed change and viewed it as an unnecessary adjustment. Netizens were not sure as to why this was even being considered as it might be detrimental to the platform, with one user even commenting:
According to @xDaily, Elon Musk announced his plans to change the interaction layout of X as a reply to a subscriber post. This was a feature that was only available to subscribers of the account, which is another thing introduced by Elon. Non-subscribers could not see this tweet. However, this did not stop subscribed users from sharing screenshots of the tweet, which went viral after being tweeted out by many popular X handles.
X users slam Elon Musk's proposed action button change
Elon Musk started off the tweet by talking about the recent change he made to the platform where he got rid of the "ugly URL cards with repetitive texts." He noted that these cards were making his eyes bleed. This change received a slew of media and advertiser backlash after the URL overlay was abandoned on embedded tweets to showcase just an image, along with the tweet text.
The founder and CEO SpaceX then stated his next change and announced his plans to "remove all the action buttons."
"We'll remove all the action buttons with their superfluous interaction counts from the main timeline. Just view count will show, unless you tap into a post," he wrote on Twitter.
A large portion of the platform's user base was left scratching their heads at this decision. Netizens were in agreement about it being an unnecessary change. A few people stated that the slashing of interaction buttons could even hinder the impression-based platform. Others claimed that Musk was destroying the social media platform.
However, there were a select few netizens who supported the decision by saying that it would help boost the visibility of smaller content creators. They agreed with Musk and said that it would better improve the aesthetic of the platform. Others pointed out that the initial outrage would eventually whither away to acceptance.
X designer, Andrea Conway clarified the changes in a reply to a user comment on @xDaily's tweet. Andrea stated that the plan was to remove the action buttons and the number count, instead replacing it with "gestural interactions" like double taps and swipes.
At the moment, X has 4 action buttons visible on the timeline, comment, retweet, like, and share. Once a post is clicked, a bookmark option appears as an additional action button.
If the proposed changes take place, the view count will be the only thing visible on posts on user timelines. Action buttons will only be visible once a post is clicked on.
