X (formerly Twitter) has rolled out a new feature allowing users to hide likes, shares, and reposts and interact with posts through custom swipe gestures as the platform grapples with declining user numbers and privacy concerns.
The update comes amid a significant exodus of users following changes to the platform’s terms of service and required participation in AI training programs.
May Ly, an iOS engineer at X, announced the new feature for iPhones on Thursday, posting, “You can now hide engagement buttons and numbers below each post and interact with posts through custom swipe gestures!”
The custom swipe gestures allow X users to like or interact with a post. However, hiding engagement buttons and numbers is optional and must be activated via X settings.
Newsweek reached out to X via email for comment.
“It’s much cleaner with engagement numbers turned off,” posted X owner Elon Musk, adding, “You can still see view count if you care.”
One X user didn’t seem impressed, sarcastically posting, “I wouldn’t have cared about this but since it has a million views I guess I should check it out.”
Over on Bluesky, in reference to the new feature, intelligence analyst Oliver Alexander skeeted (posted), “Remove engagement numbers that require people to actually engage with content, but keep the artificially inflated ‘view’ number.”
“Perfect way to attempt to hide falling levels of engagement,” he added.
Allison Robbert-Pool/Getty Images
This new feature follows a mass exodus from X in the past few weeks. Many former users have headed to Bluesky, which has amassed more than 21 million followers to date, most of whom joined very recently.
On November 6, the day after the U.S. presidential election, X experienced its largest user loss since Musk bought the platform in November 2022, NBC News reported.
Echoing many former X users who have migrated to other platforms, political commentator Emma Burnell posted on Bluesky, “At some point last night, my follower count on BlueSky surpassed that on X. It took me over a decade to build up that count on the darkest timeline.”
“At the same time, engagement on BlueSky – especially with my newsletter – is much higher. What has happened to X is a case study in destruction.”
Users also appear to be leaving X due to privacy concerns over its updated terms of service. As of November 15, the platform required all users to allow their posts to be used for AI training, including for X’s chatbot Grok. Users previously had the option to opt out of this data collection.
The updated terms stated that “this license includes the right for us to (i) analyze text and other information you provide and to otherwise provide, promote, and improve the Services, including, for example, for use with and training of our machine learning and artificial intelligence models, whether generative or another type.”
Additionally, X inserted a new clause into its terms of service, ostensibly to prevent other companies from training their AI on its users’ content.
The terms outline that “in addition to all other legal remedies available to us, you will be jointly and severally liable to us for liquidated damages as follows for requesting, viewing, or accessing more than 1,000,000 posts (including reply posts, follow posts, and any other posts) in any 24-hour period – $15,000 USD per 1,000,000 posts.”
