It sounds like an impossible task, but Mashable has done it. In a year filled with ill-advised moves and screw-ups, we’ve put together a list of…Well, there’s no other way to put it, the absolute dumbest decisions made by Elon Musk when it comes to his social media platform, X.
Musk acquired the platform in late October of last year and immediately appeared set to roll out some of the worst changes to the platform once known as Twitter (And, yes, we’ll get to that.) So, some really bad decisions — the Twitter Blue overhaul or the suspending of journalists over Elon’s Jet account — won’t make the cut, as they happened last year. But, as there were so many Musk ideas to choose from this year, that made our life a bit easier.
Furthermore, to not get bogged down with decisions that were strictly bad for advertisers, X as a business, or even Musk himself, we’ve decided that the dumbest decisions must be judged as the overall worst for the most important individuals involved: X’s users.
So, without any further ado, Mashable brings you Elon Musk’s six (6) dumbest X decisions.
6. Removing headlines from links
This Musk decision was so ludicrous in its banality, it’s almost difficult to believe it happened. If Musk hadn’t recently announced he was reversing the decision, it almost surely would’ve been closer to the top of the list.
In October, article headlines stopped appearing in the embedded X card added to users’ posts that included a link. Instead, X just included the header image from the article in the embed with absolutely zero additional context aside from an overlay over the image showing the domain that the link was directed to.
This was a huge downgrade from when X actually showed the headline of the article alongside the image. X even used to include the article’s subhead, which often was a short one or two line summary of the piece.
Yes, Musk already penalized posts that included a link to a third-party website in the algorithm in order to lower their reach and keep users on the platform. But, the removal of headlines was a decision with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Musk claimed he felt it just looked better that way and even publicly sparred with a user who simply suggested that they do not.
Less than two months later, though, Musk appears to be reversing course.
“In an upcoming release, 𝕏 will overlay title in the upper potion of the image of a URL card,” he posted on Nov. 22.
As of publication, headlines still aren’t back yet so we’ll still have to see how it goes.
5. Block logged-out visitors from viewing Twitter
Over the July 4 weekend, Musk made headlines with a string of bizarre decisions that limited visitors from using the platform that was still then-known as Twitter.
Most users will remember that weekend for the rate limits that Musk instituted on the platform which basically rationed how many posts a user could see before Twitter blocked their access to seeing more content. Musk explained at the time that the move was made in order to block web scrapers and bots from the service. Over the course of a few days, Musk slowly raised those rate limits per user and gave paying Twitter Blue subscribers even higher limits until most users were eventually able to use the platform without issue.
This was quite a significant moment in the social media space as it basically encouraged Meta to quickly move up the launch of their competing platform, Threads, in order to take advantage of Musk’s bad decision. However, if the above was all that happened, maybe the incident wouldn’t have made this list.
But that’s not all that happened. Before the rate limits were instituted and took over the conversation, Musk decided to block visitors who were not logged in to a Twitter account from viewing the platform. Visitors could not view tweets, replies, or profiles unless they had a Twitter account. This decision actually affected Twitter’s search engine traffic as Google would eventually delist Twitter links that could no longer be viewed to non-users.
To this day, the platform now known as X blocks visitors from seeing some content unless they are logged in to the platform. For example, while someone who is logged in may be able to see a post that they have a direct link to, they are unable to see any of the replies or additional posts in a thread.
4. Monetizing chum from X Premium subscribers
Way back in February, Elon Musk announced that the platform would soon roll out a monetization program which would see creators get paid for their posts.
Well, the monetization program finally did launch in late July but with a number of caveats that completely altered the state of content on X.
For one, in order to qualify for monetization a user must first be a paying subscriber to the platform’s $8 per month subscription service then-known as Twitter Blue. And only other Twitter Blue subscribers count toward a creator’s monetizable views on ads shown in the replies to their content.
Basically, the whole monetization program is a promotion for the platform’s paid subscription service.
But that’s not even the worst part. Large swathes of Twitter Blue subscribers tend to be right-wing political users, supporters of Musk, or meme accounts that often steal content to build their follower count. So, naturally, when the program first rolled out, the first batch of users who got paid were mostly right-wing influencers, Musk-friendly users, and meme accounts. And Musk paid them heftily, with some sharing paystubs showing tens of thousands of dollars in earnings.
Of course, most monetizable users don’t make anywhere near that. But the initial payments set these mostly unachievable possibilities. Now, users’ feeds are full of algorithm-boosted monetizable users sharing stolen viral chum and low-level garbage content as they chase the almighty dollar.
3. API changes kill Twitter’s third-party app ecosystem
There was once a time where Twitter was hands-down the most friendly social media platform for developers and researchers. The company provided a generous free API which led to the creation of a whole ecosystem of third-party apps that facilitate content creation and academic study.
And then Elon Musk came along and killed it all off.
In early 2023, then-Twitter announced that it would be sunsetting its current API tiers. Instead of free API access, developers would have to pay. This would have been understandable if Twitter charged a reasonable fee. After all, some of these third-party apps were making money itself off of Twitter’s API.
However, it became very clear, very quickly, that the new paid API tiers wouldn’t be reasonable at all. Under Musk, Twitter rolled out a $100 per month plan that it labeled as being for students or hobbyists. Basically, it was unusable if your app even had the smallest of user bases.
The next highest priced tier? The Enterprise plan, which started at $42,000 per month. Developers almost couldn’t believe it at first and some held out that Twitter would launch a lower, more reasonably priced tier before the changeover.
That did not happen. Developers were soon left with a choice: Fork over $42k each month or shut down their app. Many were forced to do the latter. Popular Twitter bots, helpful content creation apps, and informative analytics services soon shut down frankly because their owners could not afford to pay the exorbitant API price.
By the time Twitter officially shuttered the old API tiers, the platform’s once healthy third-party developer ecosystem was dead. And to add insult to injury, months after many of these third-party apps shut down, Twitter introduced a $5,000 per month “Pro” API plan as a mid-level tier. The price was still likely out of reach for most, but there were apps that could’ve subsisted if that plan had previously been offered. For them, though, it was too late.
2. Removing real verification
Twitter has long had its problems with fake news, disinformation, and misinformation. Musk certainly is not responsible for that. However, what he is responsible for is exacerbating the problem over and over again with each decision he makes.
Perhaps the very worst of those decisions was the removal of real user verification. The old Twitter first came up with the blue checkmark badge way back in 2009 after it encountered legal issues with MLB manager Tony La Russa over a parody account. The idea was simple: We should verify that people are who they say they are on Twitter in order to avoid imposters and impersonator accounts. Twitter soon became the place to be to interact with your favorite celebrities, athletes, and media figures precisely because the company verified the accounts belonging to those individuals were real and then let users know this in the form of the blue checkmark.
The company prioritized “notable users” for verification, which made sense as they were the most susceptible to the issues that verification solved. Unfortunately, over the years, verification on Twitter became a status symbol. The system obviously wasn’t perfect, but it did work in combating misinformation. A verified account could be trusted or face losing trust as verification made anonymity impossible for those users.
Yes, there are still verified users on the platform. But under Musk, anyone can just pay for it now.
When Musk acquired the company, one of his first proclamations was to get rid of the verification badge and institute a new model where anyone who signs up for the $8 per month Twitter Blue would now get one. Of course, paying for the badge defeated the purpose of the verification. Musk’s plan to democratize verification was instituted in 2022, so it doesn’t make it on this particular list.
But Musk didn’t remove the legacy verified users’ blue checkmark until April of this year. So this aspect very much makes the list.
On April 20, Twitter officially began purging checkmarks from users who were verified under the old system and didn’t pay.
Certain Twitter power users began a campaign to block all paying blue checkmark accounts in response. Musk countered that by forcing a courtesy blue checkmark on those users. He also rolled out complimentary blue checkmarks for users with more than one million followers as well. The thought process behind that was users couldn’t automate the blocking process if accounts that they liked would accidentally get blocked as a result.
Verification became a pointless mess. And Musk didn’t even get a financial bump out of it as most verified users didn’t end up paying to keep their blue checkmark.
1. X name change
This one seems obvious. The single worst decision Musk made in 2023 was getting rid of the company’s globally recognized brand name, Twitter.
Musk wanted to turn Twitter into his grand vision of an “everything” app. He’s also long wanted to use his “X.com” domain name. According to Musk, the “Twitter” name didn’t fit this grander idea. His solution? Changing the platform’s name to “X.”
Over a weekend in mid-July, Musk decided to remove everything that was connected to the name Twitter. The iconic blue bird logo? Gone. Tweets? No more — they are now branded with the generic name “posts.” Same with retweets? Of course, they are “reposts” now. Twitter Blue turned into X Premium and so on.
But it turns out that changing a global brand name is hard and has many side effects.
To this day, there are parts of the website that still say “Twitter” on it. In fact, while the X.com domain does work, the main domain name pointing to the billions of posts and profiles is still Twitter.com. The genetic single-letter “X” has also brought about Musk’s platform being sued by similarly named companies for copyright infringement. Perhaps worst of all for Musk, the X name change actually resulted in the social media platform losing users, web traffic, and dropping in the App Store rankings.
Most importantly, users of the platform did not welcome the change. Many even still refer to the platform as Twitter. Mashable even has to constantly refer to “X” as “the platform formerly known as Twitter” just so our readers can follow along with the coverage of Musk’s website.
And all of those reasons are why the X name change is easily Musk’s dumbest decision of 2023.
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Here it is: Elon Musk’s worst decisions over at Twitter…err…X of 2023, from changing the app’s name to killing its API ecosystem.
