‘Aesthetic Nightmare’: Elon Musk Bans Hashtags in Ads on X

New Delhi: Hashtags play a vital role in social media. They help users explore trends, follow topics, and connect with broader conversations. However, under Musk’s leadership, the focus seems to shift towards designing, especially in advertising. Musk believes that hashtags disrupt the visual appeal of content, and this update aims to streamline and enhance the ad experience for the platform users.

Twitter (now X) CEO Elon Musk has announced a ban on hashtags in advertisements on the platform, labelling them an "aesthetic nightmare." “Starting tomorrow, the aesthetic nightmare that is hashtags will be banned from ads on X,” Musk said.

He described that users to avoid using hashtags due to the new development of the AI tool Grok algorithm, which does not require the traditional use of hashtags.

Elon Musk once asked users to avoid using hashtags

In 2014, Twitter's CEO openly labelled the hashtag 'ugly' and asked users to avoid using it, as the platform's algorithm no longer required it. He described the increasing use of AI tools on the platform and the requirement for traditional hashtags, which no longer exist.

“Please stop using hashtags. The system doesn't need them anymore, looks ugly,” he said.

Musk also claimed that X's discovery and search algorithm utilised the AI Chatbot Grok, which was unable to group subjects without the need for the old traditional hashtags.

His recent post since then has surfaced online, leaving many users confused. However, some users who agree with Musk called hashtags visually unappealing.

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Netizen react

One user said, “Hashtags in ads were the Comic Sans of social media. Glad even Elon Musk couldn’t ignore the visual pollution anymore,” said one user.

“Hashtags don’t work. I don’t know why many people still use them.” Another added,

“It's not a nightmare. They're just fine. You're overplaying it. Fix account-level shadow bans instead," the third user wrote.