Elon Musk may own X, formerly Twitter, but that didn’t stop many of the social media platform’s users from giving him the business on Tuesday.
What did the Tesla mogul do to deserve the snark? Well, he told the site’s users to no longer use hashtags to identify and organise specific topics.
The admonishment came in response to a post from a man who asked Grok, the platform’s AI chatbot, to weigh in on using hashtags in posts.
Grok apparently isn’t a fan of the tags, calling them “as useful as a screen door on a submarine,” and Musk agreed.
“Please stop using hashtags. The system doesn’t need them anymore and they look ugly,” he posted.
But even though the owner of X doesn’t like hashtags, many others think they have value.
X users snarkily let Musk know they think he’s off-base on this, and yes, some even included particularly appropriate ― hashtags ― to make their point.
Some people tried to explain to Musk that hashtags help people organise and find contact on X.
One person noted that Musk’s hatred for the hashtag is yet another reason that has made the site “unusable and boring.”
And another user pointed out how the site’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, didn’t appear to get Musk’s memo.