Elon Musk says X (Twitter) will hide Likes an Repost Metrics from Timeline

It’s the latest bold claim from Musk about changes to the app, since he took over the platform in 2022.

Since Musk bought Twitter and renamed it to X, he has been vocal about his plans to transform the platform into the “everything app” under his ownership.

This latest announcement will be seen by some as the latest step in that process, while others will question if this move is actually about a less cluttered looking timeline and more about a decline in public engagement on Musk’s own posts.

• Musk announced while speaking at an event yesterday that X is considering hiding metrics for reposts, likes and replies from users’ timelines
• He later confirmed this while responding to a user on X, saying the change will “definitely” happen
• Musk said the timeline will continue to display view counts – a feature added after he took over the social platform – “as proxy for the other metrics”
• The message he responded to did suggest that the other hidden metrics would still be accessible when you click into a post
• Musk’s claim is that this engagement information visually clutters content on the platform

Although this would mark another dramatic change to the platform under Musk’s leadership, it’s worth noting that there are previous examples of Musk saying a change to the app will definitely happen, only to backtrack – removal of the ‘block’ feature and the changes to how news article headlines were displayed on X, for instance.

Engagement metrics such as ‘likes’ and ‘reposts’ have been a contentious issue for Musk since he bought the company and this could be seen as his latest reaction to frustration at the decline in public engagement on his own tweets or examples of him getting publicly “ratioed” by other users on the website.

Even if this change does go ahead, creators and brands would still be able to see the performance of their posts by clicking on the post and accessing analytics, so in the immediate it wouldn’t impact strategies or reporting processes for brands on the platform.

However, a change like this could negatively impact usage of the platform longer term, as the potential for users to publicly rack up reposts and likes on a tweet to go viral is a big part of the appeal of the platform, which could cause users to explore other platforms like Threads.

This is another example of why it’s so important to have a well-rounded social platform strategy and continuing to explore and activate on reactive channels including TikTok, Threads and other emerging platforms will be key for marketers if X usership continues to decline further.