Elon Musk's latest radical Twitter overhaul: X is about to start hiding all likes to 'allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so'
- Likes will become private for everyone to 'better protect your privacy'
- READ MORE: Elon Musk warns he will BAN Apple devices from his firms
From paywalled features to a huge rebrand, its safe to say that X (formerly Twitter) has completely transformed since Elon Musk took over.
Now, the self-proclaimed 'chief twit' has revealed his next big change to the platform.
Musk has confirmed reports that X is to start hiding all likes on posts on the platform.
This will 'allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so', according to Musk.
However, it seems that not all users are impressed with the change, with one venting: 'Why does everything done to this platform only make it worse? I've yet to see a good decision made.'
From paywalled features to a huge rebrand, its safe to say that X (formerly Twitter ) has completely transformed since Elon Musk took over. Now, the self-proclaimed 'chief twit' has revealed his next big change to the platform
Musk has confirmed reports that X is to start hiding all likes on posts on the platform
Reports this week suggested the social media giant would imminently start rolling out the change, with the billionaire posting a link to one such report and confirming the change was incoming.
Writing alongside the article, Mr Musk said making likes private was 'important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so'.
Last month, X director of engineering Haofei Wang said the change was coming in order to help users of the site 'protect their public image'.
He added that some users were unwilling to like certain content on the site over fear of retaliation.
'Yeah, we are making likes private,' he wrote on X in May.
'Public likes are incentivising the wrong behaviour.
'For example, many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be 'edgy' in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image.
'Soon you'll be able to like without worrying who might see it.
In a subsequent post, X's Engineering team has confirmed how the change will work
'Also a reminder that the more posts you like, the better your For you algorithm will become.'
In a subsequent post, X's Engineering team has confirmed how the change will work.
'This week we're making Likes private for everyone to better protect your privacy,' it tweeted.
'You will still be able to see posts you have liked (but others cannot).
'Like count and other metrics for your own posts will still show up under notifications.
'You will no longer see who liked someone else's post.
'A post's author can see who liked its posts.'
Since Mr Musk took over Twitter – as it was then known – in late 2022, he has loosened content moderation on the site and allowed more controversial material on the platform, as part of his support of 'absolute free speech'.
Several users have raised their concerns with the update.
'This is one of the worst decisions X has ever made. This has never ever worked when the other 10 companies tried it,' one user tweeted.
Another added: 'in other words... since we can't get rid of blatant platform manipulation we are going to hide it.'
And one vented: 'you guys are really committed to killing this app.'
A TIMELINE OF ELON MUSK'S COMMENTS ON AI
Musk has been a long-standing, and very vocal, condemner of AI technology and the precautions humans should take
Elon Musk is one of the most prominent names and faces in developing technologies.
The billionaire entrepreneur heads up SpaceX, Tesla and the Boring company.
But while he is on the forefront of creating AI technologies, he is also acutely aware of its dangers.
Here is a comprehensive timeline of all Musk's premonitions, thoughts and warnings about AI, so far.
August 2014 - 'We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.'
October 2014 - 'I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence.'
October 2014 - 'With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.'
June 2016 - 'The benign situation with ultra-intelligent AI is that we would be so far below in intelligence we'd be like a pet, or a house cat.'
July 2017 - 'I think AI is something that is risky at the civilisation level, not merely at the individual risk level, and that's why it really demands a lot of safety research.'
July 2017 - 'I have exposure to the very most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it.'
July 2017 - 'I keep sounding the alarm bell but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal.'
August 2017 - 'If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea.'
November 2017 - 'Maybe there's a five to 10 percent chance of success [of making AI safe].'
March 2018 - 'AI is much more dangerous than nukes. So why do we have no regulatory oversight?'
April 2018 - '[AI is] a very important subject. It's going to affect our lives in ways we can't even imagine right now.'
April 2018 - '[We could create] an immortal dictator from which we would never escape.'
November 2018 - 'Maybe AI will make me follow it, laugh like a demon & say who’s the pet now.'
September 2019 - 'If advanced AI (beyond basic bots) hasn’t been applied to manipulate social media, it won’t be long before it is.'
February 2020 - 'At Tesla, using AI to solve self-driving isn’t just icing on the cake, it the cake.'
July 2020 - 'We’re headed toward a situation where AI is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now. But that doesn’t mean that everything goes to hell in five years. It just means that things get unstable or weird.'
April 2021: 'A major part of real-world AI has to be solved to make unsupervised, generalized full self-driving work.'
February 2022: 'We have to solve a huge part of AI just to make cars drive themselves.'
December 2022: 'The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly.'