Elon Musk declared today that X, the social media site that was formerly known as Twitter, will no longer use hashtags in its advertisements. The modification will only affect paid content and go into effect on Friday. Regular posts won’t be impacted.
Musk called hashtags a “aesthetic nightmare” in a different article, stating that the goal of removing them is to make promotional content look better. Over the years, Musk has been critical of hashtags, calling them “ugly” and out of date.
Using AI to Manage Content Finding
Musk’s comments in December 2024 urging people to completely abandon hashtag use prompted the decision.
He maintained at the time that X’s AI technologies, such as the Grok chatbot created by xAI, could recognize and arrange information without the use of conventional hashtags. Musk claims that this renders the manual tagging system obsolete.
In 2007, Twitter launched hashtags as a way to organize discussions and highlight popular subjects. Their absence from advertisements represents a significant shift from one of the platform’s most iconic and early features. X has moved toward algorithm-driven discovery under Musk’s leadership, prioritizing automated content arrangement and better visuals.
