Yesterday, contemporary off of revamping hyperlink previews on X, which now sees preview playing cards solely show the header picture, proprietor Elon Musk made one other announcement about the way forward for the X UI.

All the interplay counts and motion buttons, besides the views counter, which X added again in December (additionally on the request of Musk), will quickly be gone from view in feeds, and can solely be seen throughout the publish particulars, i.e. if you broaden a publish.

So, ultimately, posts in-stream will seem like this:

Which appears flawed, in a variety of how.

For one, it’ll scale back publish engagement, which we already know primarily based on Instagram’s check of hidden like counts again in 2019. Analysis confirmed that general publish interactions declined considerably for influencers who have been within the areas the place the check was carried out, with the dearth up upfront metrics instantly altering consumer behaviors.

You’d presume comparable impacts on whole re-posts, with peer actions having a minimum of some impact on broader behaviors.

That might not be a nasty factor, as we should always all be basing such on how we personally reply, not how others have interaction. However with likes and retweets additionally having an impression on publish attain, as per X’s open sourced algorithm, you’ll be able to guess that loads of platform influencers, who are actually seeking to maximize engagement in an effort to enhance their advert income share, will probably be none too happy if that is carried out. 

Instagram additional famous that individuals usually use like counts ‘to get a way for what’s trending or well-liked’, and taking them away impacted this. X is the house of real-time engagement and tendencies, so that may possible be much more of an element on this case.

Primarily, eradicating the rapid response choices and counts will inevitably see them used much less. And with X just lately revealing that almost all of exercise in its app is by way of re-posts and quotes, that’ll possible see general exercise within the app decline, by quite a bit.

From one perspective that could possibly be a optimistic, with previous analysis suggesting that re-posting, and the benefit of re-sharing a message within the app, drastically amplifies misinformation. So possibly such a change would restrict the unfold of pretend information, however it’s X that’ll have to promote its advert companions, and customers, on the idea that much less engagement is definitely a great factor.

For context, X says that it at present sees 500 million posts per day, with 300 million of these being re-posts and quotes.

Relying on how that is enacted, it may additionally impression publish sharing, with the share icon more likely to additionally get much less emphasis within the up to date show, which might additionally restrict expanded dialogue and interplay.

X has additional clarified that it could be seeking to implement extra gesture controls as a substitute, like double-tap to Like, and swipe to answer. However I can’t see that being as efficient, whereas the removing of the engagement numbers may arguably be the larger impression.

However on the flip aspect, may it work?

The advantages can be much less competitors on self-importance metrics, with attain turning into the primary focus. That might put extra emphasis on the publish content material itself, whereas it may additionally truly drive extra direct publish interactions, in phrases expands, click-throughs, and so forth.

The change to solely view numbers would additionally carry X extra into line with YouTube’s metric show, and with X seeking to put extra emphasis on video content material, that may additionally make sense.

However it’d be a giant shift, which might take a while to get used to for a lot of customers.

The issue with that’s that X wants to maximise its income, in an effort to get again to break-even, and even past that, as a result of firm now being saddled with billions in debt. With this in thoughts, can X climate decrease than anticipated efficiency, and the resultant impacts, within the brief time period, until consumer behaviors re-align with this new show?

Primarily, it’s not laborious to foretell what is going to occur, as a result of we’ve already seen it with IG’s comparable check. The query is whether or not it’s value implementing, as a method to shift consumer behaviors, and reform how in-app engagement works.

It’s a dangerous strategy. However I suppose, that’s what Elon does, so… good luck?