Elon Musk Hiding ‘Likes’ Far Less Appealing When You’re Not Into Far-Right Nazi Porn

He knows his audience.

Super genius Elon Musk just announced his latest attempt to sabotage the platform everyone still calls Twitter. He’s making the “like” function completely anonymous, so only the person who posted the original content and the person who liked it will know. Musk has his reasons, of course, and they’re pretty stupid. The streak continues.

---

---

Musk posted Tuesday, “Important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!” All those billions and he remains a pathetic paranoid with a persecution complex.

“Yeah, we are making likes private,” confirmed Musk’s Director of Engineering Haofei Wang, who’s probably paid reasonably well to agree with him. “Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior. For example, many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be ‘edgy’ in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image. Soon you’ll be able to like without worrying who might see it. Also a reminder that the more posts you like, the better your For you algorithm will become.”

The word “better” would somewhat imply that the annoying “For You” feature was ever good in the first place. It frequently defaults to showing me posts by people I would never willingly follow, including Musk.

Hiding likes was previously available only to “premium” subscribers — people who mistakenly believe paying Musk to use the platform is more worthwhile than just setting their money on fire. Musk’s team sold the option as a way users could “keep spicy likes private by hiding your likes tab.” (He apparently fired his best copywriters along with most of his content moderation staff.) Now, Musk is giving away the feature to everyone, whether they like it or not, because he’s what the Squirrel Nut Zippers would call a “bad businessman.”

Who is this helping?

Musk seems to think that people hesitate to like posts because the woke mob will descend upon them. (He’s expressed zero concern for the women and queer people who literally can’t post anything without harassment from the hateful trolls Musk enables.) I tend to think that if you are ashamed of people knowing the content you like online, then you’re probably viewing porn, which is totally your business. You should consider a more sex positive attitude.

One of the few bright spots in 2017 was when Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s account “liked” a pornographic tweet.

“The offensive tweet posted on [Cruz’s] account earlier has been removed by staff and reported to Twitter,” Cruz’s senior communications adviser Catherine Frazier explained, though not satisfactorily. Reporting the tweet suggests that someone posted it on Cruz’s account, when that’s not what actually happened. Someone with access to Cruz’s account actively liked the porn post.

After an internal investigation I assume was at least as rigorous as the Supreme Court’s search for the Dobbs leaker, Cruz claimed that “there are a number of people on the team that have access to the account and it appears that someone inadvertently hit the like button,” but offensive content didn’t just randomly pop up in people’s Twitter feed back then. We weren’t yet subjected to the “For You” feature.

Cruz insisted, “It was a staffing issue, and it was inadvertent, it was a mistake, it was not a deliberate action.” Sure, fine, whatever.

Now, the anonymous Cruz staffer who is totally not Ted Cruz can cruise social media porn undetected. We’re probably all the better for it.

The more likely motive, though, is that Musk wants to let right-wing snowflakes show their support for rancid content without any personal consequence. We can safely assume that Musk is more inclined to protect users who like racist, sexist, or transphobic posts than users who like pro-Palestine posts.

Back in 2020, All Elite Wrestling executive vice president and performer Cody Rhodes received blowback when he liked a tweet stating “if Sami [Zayn] hates normal, regular American folk supporting their President he should go back to Canada IMO.” Sha'Carri Richardson received some heat in 2021 when she liked an offensive tweet about Jamaicans. Marriott once fired an employee who liked a tweet about Tibet that offended the Chinese government. I don’t think people should ever have been fired for liking tweets. Now, the creeps who spewed venom on a Black woman who dared appear in a Star Wars series should go through some things.

Musk has liked more than his share of offensive tweets, though he’s gone so far as to actually respond positively to them. That’s like if the person who wasn’t Ted Cruz had quote-tweeted that porn video.

It’s true that hiding likes now means that you’re the only one who knows that Mark Hamill or Jeri Ryan saw and appreciated your tweet, but you can always just take a screen shot. The people who like Nazis in private can keep their jobs and don’t have to hear complaints from their liberal relatives, but they can’t hide the shame they rightly feel, not really.

Alex Kirshner at Slate writes that “what’s really happening is more nefarious than Musk anonymizing a key feature of the platform to protect some posters’ feelings. The much likelier driver of the change is the embarrassing morass of spam, bots, and platform manipulation filling the void on Musk’s X. And by hiding information about who likes a post, Musk has made it easier to obscure his mess.”

True, but it’s a major election year and Musk’s new policy helps Republicans show their support for extremists without transparency. It’s disturbing but also very much on model. Musk has turned Twitter from a spirited public space to an X-rated klan bake plagued by spam and harassment. That’s a harsh reality his engineers can’t help him hide from the world.

Follow Stephen Robinson on Bluesky and Threads.

Subscribe to his YouTube channel for more fun content.