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. once you increase a publish.

So, ultimately, posts in-stream will appear to be this:

Which appears flawed, in a variety of how.

For one, it’ll cut back publish engagement, which we already know based mostly on Instagram’s take a look at 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 take a look at was applied, with the dearth up upfront metrics instantly altering consumer behaviors.

You’d presume comparable impacts on complete re-posts, with peer actions having at the least some impact on broader behaviors.

That will not be a nasty factor, as we must always all be basing such on how we personally reply, not how others have interaction. However with likes and retweets additionally having an influence on publish attain, as per X’s open sourced algorithm, you may guess that a variety of platform influencers, who are actually trying to maximize engagement in an effort to increase their advert income share, might be none too happy if that is applied. 

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

Primarily, eradicating the fast response choices and counts will inevitably see them used much less. And with X not too long ago 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 rather a lot.

From one perspective that may very well be a optimistic, with previous analysis suggesting that re-posting, and the convenience of re-sharing a message within the app, significantly amplifies misinformation. So perhaps such a change would restrict the unfold of faux information, however it’s X that’ll must promote its advert companions, and customers, on the idea that much less engagement is definitely an excellent 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 influence publish sharing, with the share icon prone 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 might be trying to implement extra gesture controls instead, like double-tap to Like, and swipe to answer. However I can’t see that being as efficient, whereas the elimination of the engagement numbers may arguably be the larger influence.

However on the flip aspect, may it work?

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

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

However it’d be an enormous 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 onerous to foretell what’s going to occur, as a result of we’ve already seen it with IG’s comparable take a look at. 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?