Elon Musk declares this ‘aesthetic nightmare’ will be banned from X starting tomorrow
X owner Elon Musk has declared that he will soon remove an “aesthetic nightmare” from the advertisements on his social media platform. The richest man in the world claimed that hashtags were a nightmare on X ads, and starting tomorrow, they will no longer be allowed on his social media platform.
Elon Musk acquired social media platform Twitter and renamed it to X.(AFP)
“Starting tomorrow, the aesthetic nightmare that is hashtags will be banned from ads on X,” he wrote in a post.
Check out his post here:
Many users were left confused by the post, but it does not appear that the ban applies to hashtags on normal posts on X. However, Musk has long criticised the use of hashtags on his social media platform and urged users not to use them.
In 2024, Musk openly labelled hashtags ugly and asked people to stop using them, as the algorithm no longer needed them.
“Please stop using hashtags. The system doesn’t need them anymore and they look ugly,” he had said.
He had explained that with the increasing use of AI tools on the platform, the need for traditional hashtags no longer existed. Musk claimed that X’s discovery and search algorithm utilised the AI chatbot Grok, which was able to group subjects without needing the help of hashtags.
This marks another big change brought to X, formerly Twitter, after Musk acquired the popular site in late 2022. Hashtags have been a vital part of Twitter since 2007, often used to group trends or conversations.
X users react
The post confused many users but was welcomed by others who agreed with Musk and called hashtags visually unappealing now that they are irrelevant to the algorithm.
“Hashtags in ads were the Comic Sans of social media. Glad even Elon Musk couldn’t ignore the visual pollution anymore,” said one user.
Another added, “Hashtags don’t work. I don’t know why many people still use them.”
Meanwhile, some users called for other issues to be fixed instead of “aesthetic” corrections.
“It’s not a nightmare. They’re just fine. You’re overplaying it. Fix account-level shadow bans instead,” said one of them.
