Elon Musk, the person behind the social media platform X, mentioned on Wednesday that they are thinking about getting rid of likes and repost counts on posts. He shared this idea during his talk at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference.
According to Musk, they want to improve the user experience on the social media platform by considering this change. This decision is part of Musk’s bigger plan for X, which goes beyond regular social media and includes features like messaging, banking, and shopping.
In the conference, Musk also talked about future plans for X, mentioning that the platform is close to getting a license in New York that allows them to handle money transactions. They expect the approval for this license in the next few months. This is an important step for X to add financial features, like letting users make payments to each other.
The way people show engagement on posts, like ‘likes’ and ‘reposts,’ has been a topic of debate since Musk took over the platform. Last year, there were reports that Musk asked engineers to adjust algorithms to make his posts more visible, possibly because of competition with President Joe Biden’s Super Bowl tweet.
Musk’s announcement comes at a time when X, previously known as Twitter, is celebrating a legal win. The platform successfully defended itself in a $250 million copyright lawsuit from 17 music publishers, who claimed copyright infringement for almost 1,700 songs. A US District Judge in Nashville, Tennessee, mostly dismissed the claims, stating that the publishers couldn’t argue for “comprehensive general liability for infringement” against X.
