The owner of X, Elon Musk, announced his decision to eliminate the use of bold and italic fonts in posts on October 1, 2024, on his own platform.
According to him, the decision was prompted by the "immediate and excessive" usage of the feature. He expressed his frustrations in the tweet:
"Due to immediate and excessive use of bold font on 𝕏, it will be removed from view in the main timeline. You will have to click on post details to see anything in bold. My eyes are bleeding.
Elon Musk continued, in a follow-up post,
"Same goes for italics and any other formatting. They are being abused for engagement farming."
User's react to Elon Musk's decision, claims he's "preserving the aesthetics of X"
However, X users were not happy with this move. Many reacted to Elon Musk's tweets with dismay, such as when one user said, "Ugh. The few ruin it for the rest of us. Bold is helpful for topics. Sad."
The user was not alone, as many more chimed in to echo the sentiments.
"'My eyes are bleeding.' Shouldn’t you create a feature in settings that forces all tweets to be normal fonts for those whose ‘eyes are bleeding’. I bet you, others love bold texts. Removing it because you dislike it is subjective and sounds Pharaoh-like," one user claimed.
"Why not just make a setting so you personally don’t have to see bold font? Some accounts like to see bold font otherwise they miss a post because it blends into the echo chamber," another suggested.
"Doesn’t really seem all that conductive to free speech if you’re not free to type in bold font," another noted.
Notably, though, others such as Journalist Collin Rugg backed this decision up, thanking and praising Elon Musk for it.
"Thank you for preserving the aesthetics of X," one user said.
"THANK YOU, now this I can get behind," another said.
"Agreed. It was annoying," one user stated.
When another user, @lexfridman, stated that this was a "bold move" the CEO of Tesla Motors simply replied with a seemingly sarcastic "Thanks" in bold letters.
The change came into effect immediately, and is applicable on the domain across the web, as well as on the iOS and Android apps. According to the Business Standard, the bold and italic formatting features were restricted to the web domain initially, but were later enabled on mobile platforms as well, thereby triggering an efflux in usage.
Just last month, Musk introduced another groundbreaking feature that sent netizens into a frenzy: he tinkered with the 'Block' feature. In the new update, all public posts made by a user on X will be viewable by everyone on the platform, including those who have been blocked by the user. According to Musk, it was "high time this happened."
The current version allows users to block an account, thereby hindering the blocked user from viewing or engaging with their posts. Notably, X users discovered a way to circumvent this feature by logging out or opening the blocker's public account on a separate browser.
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