Once more, Elon Musk’s X, once known as Twitter, is preparing a contentious redesign for the platform.
X is trying to remove the like, comment, and repost buttons from post replies and their respective numbers. Reaction postings would also lose their view count.
Read also: X launches private likes feature to enhance user privacy
What New Features Are Coming to X for iOS?
Although this modification to X has not yet been made public, X user @aaronp613 found it in the source of the most recent X app, X for iOS v10.53. This method allows for discovering platform updates and new features, some of which have never been released. However, this indicates that the company is formally testing out the removal of these buttons and numbers and is seriously considering making the change.
Removing these features would impact only the appearance of replies when viewing the original post. When a user clicks on a reply, the views and buttons for liking, commenting, and reporting that reply are displayed on the posting page.
Eliminating interaction counts from replies would alter X’s culture by impacting the “ratio,” a popular social media meme. The reply posts from users who leave comments on a user’s contentious or unpopular post on X frequently garner more likes and reposts than the initial post. This is called a “ratio.”
Unpopular X modifications
Musk has a history of drastically altering X’s culture. Of course, the most notable example is Twitter’s total rebranding to X and the elimination of the colloquial term “tweet” for posts.
Musk’s X made the most recent change to make all user likes private. The company acknowledged this was done to safeguard users who liked contentious postings.
Read also: Behind the Decision: X’s Shift on NSFW Content
A Timeline of X’s Link Preview Changes
However, X has also retracted controversial decisions. Last year, for example, because Musk did not like how the link headlines appeared, X removed them from postings. The platform experienced issues with the contextless link previews, and X quickly returned to showing headlines.
Another similar X test that eliminated the like, comment, and respond buttons from the main original post when seen in the feed was found in the X for iOS app’s code last month. After this modification, users have to swipe left or right to interact with a post. X has not yet activated this functionality.
