Topics: Elon Musk, Twitter, Social Media, News
Elon Musk says he's banning a feature on X which is being 'abused for engagement farming' and 'making his eyes bleed.'
The SpaceX and Tesla CEO purchased the company, previously known as Twitter, in 2022.
He's made a number of changes over those two years, most obviously to its name and logo.
Other alterations include making the verification blue tick available to premium subscribers and, more recently, hiding users' liked posts from public view.
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Back in April, Musk threatened to 'suspend and trace to the source' any accounts participating in engagement farming.
The practice refers to accounts using manipulative techniques to generate maximum interaction on their posts.
These could include posting content to provoke outrage or conversation, or even using specific meme formats.
Now, Musk is threatening to crack down on another tactic the accounts are using.
Taking to the platform on October 1, he said: "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."
He added: "Same goes for italics and any other formatting. They are being abused for engagement farming".
Musk's post has been viewed more than 25 million times, receiving more than 120k likes and thousands of responses.
Most people were glad to hear about the change as one person said: "Thank you for preserving the aesthetics of X."
A second added: "I ain't even mad" as a third responded: "holy s**t he is doing something to improve the app" (sic).
Others weren't even aware of the feature, with one person admitting: "I didn’t even know we could do that...Oh well."
A second asked: "How do you even post in bold? I'm so behind."
Yahoo! News previously reported that most of the time engagement farming is 'done with individual accounts.' Accounts may join influencer pods to raise each other's engagement - the number of likes, shares and comments they get - on a larger scale.
This can include replicating popular meme formats, recycling content and follow-baiting - when accounts follow others en masse to increase their own follower account before unfollowing.
Most accounts are capped at following 5,000 people at once, until their own following increases.
It is not known when the bold font will be removed from main timelines on X. Musk has not shared any further details on tackling engagement farming.
