Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has announced that hashtags will soon be banned from advertisements on the social media platform X. Characterizing hashtags as an “(a)esthetic nightmare”, Musk explained that this is a specific change that is targeting ads. In a post on the micro-blogging site, Musk suggested that the ban will come into effect from Friday, 27th June.
Normal posts on the platform will still be able to include hashtags like before. The restriction only extends to advertisements, not standard posts.
While hashtags have, for years, been a key element of social media that allowed users to find content and participate in discussions, Musk has slammed them for making the platform’s appearance ugly.
Describing hashtags as “ugly”, Musk had, in a December 2024 post, urged people to completely avoid using them, as he wrote, “Please stop using hashtags. The system doesn’t need them anymore, and they look ugly.”
While some experts believe that the progress made in Artificial Intelligence has practically made hashtags unnecessary, Musk’s view, reports suggest, is that X’s discovery and search functions—fueled by the AI chatbot Grok—can now categorize topics and present related content without using hashtags, a move reportedly aimed at the so-called cleaning up of the platform.
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