Elon Musk bans hashtags from ads on X.
Elon Musk announced today that hashtags will no longer be a thing in ads on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The change will take effect on Friday and applies exclusively to paid content. Regular posts will remain unaffected.
In a separate post, Elon Musk referred to hashtags as an “esthetic nightmare,” emphasizing that their removal is intended to improve the appearance of promotional content.
Musk has had a long-standing criticism of hashtags, which he had previously described as “ugly” and outdated.
AI to Handle Content Discovery
The decision follows Musk’s December 2024 remarks encouraging users to stop using hashtags altogether.
At the time, he argued that X’s AI systems, including the Grok chatbot developed by xAI, were capable of identifying and organizing content without relying on traditional hashtags.
According to Elon Musk, this makes the manual tagging system redundant.
Hashtags were introduced on Twitter in 2007 as a tool for grouping conversations and surfacing trending topics. Their removal from ads is quite the change from one of the platform’s earliest and most recognizable features.
Under Musk’s ownership, X has shifted toward algorithm-driven discovery, favoring cleaner visuals and automated content organization.
