July 28, 2023

A problem with X.

I'm noticing the X in the upper corner of the "tweet" I embedded in something I posted yesterday:

When I see an "X" in the corner of an image I see on screen, it feels as though clicking on it will make it go away. Now, clicking on an "X" is supposed to feel like a way to take me onto The Website Formerly Known as Twitter. But my instinct is to click when something is annoying me, not to click when I want more. 

57 comments:

R C Belaire said...

Some behavioral adjustment required.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

To me X is the opposite of a ✅ check mark. As in the correct answer.

An X is also a cross. ‘Pick up your cross and follow me.’ was never among my favorite passages.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

X also used to mean closing a windows page.

michaele said...

Ha, I wrote a comment and then accidentally hit the key x and it erased the whole comment. I never knew that could happen. That confirms even more strongly that this "X" move is a mistake.

Old and slow said...

Oh that Elon, what a dummy.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

I like the idea of ridding "twitter" as the name. Not sure I like "X"

gilbar said...

it must be Sad, to be Old

rehajm said...

I was not of the opinion but am starting to believe Elon just wants to kill it- Ad traffic way off, he’s foiling the scrapers, no anonymous looking, and now the brand logo is causing functional confusion what reduces traffic.

rehajm said...

Used to be if one googled ‘Elon Musk Twitter’ the search page would display Elon’s latest Tweets. Yesterday I got some of his Tweets from 2022…

Levi Starks said...

Xerox

Bill R said...

Our research department says people are tired of Coke. We need to refresh the product. We need "New Coke!"...

Rocco said...

So is not-Twitter X-rated now?

rwnutjob said...

Elon owned the X.com domain for years. Sold it with PayPal. bought it back from PayPal in 2017. He's had this planned.

I don't have the "X" on the browser version on a PC laptop. I much prefer the browser than the clunky app Twatter uses.

MadisonMan said...

It was jarring to see the 'X' on my phone where the TwitterBird icon used to be. Kinda strange that the app can manipulate my phone that way without my say-so. I wonder what else it does!

rwnutjob said...

However, they are back to nuking conservative accounts for crap reasons. I think the bot farms are mass reporting accounts. some very good conservatives are being targeted

Barbara said...

That baby Elon is too big for his britches.

Stv30 said...

If it was the x symbol used to close an annoying pop-up, it would be MUCH smaller and relocate itself just as you were about to click.

rhhardin said...

It needs a twitter bird perched on the X.

Oligonicella said...

"no anonymous looking"

You're going to have to elaborate. I just went and browsed some posts anonymously.

Mark said...

"I think the bot farms are mass reporting accounts."

You would think it raining if Elon pissed on your leg but told you it was rain.

Yes, it's bot farms not incompetence or advertiser demands.

Oligonicella said...

@MadisonMan: That bird and the X (icons) are just pics. It's akin to if Ann would change her picture at the top of the page. It's manipulation of the faintest degree.

rehajm said...

You're going to have to elaborate

It isn’t new news, Elon announced it a few weeks ago. Search for any twitter account, options are: sign in with google, sign in with apple, or create an account. already have an account!? Sign in. No lookie without…

This morning a few accounts have what appear to be current tweets but a click through shows old tweets- at least six months old. No replys…

rehajm said...

This morning a few accounts have what appear to be current tweets but a click through shows old tweets- at least six months old. No replys

…that’s if you google. You get what the scrapers find. Elon said he’s trying to stop that…

Breezy said...

Ya - the logo (at a minimum) needs to go back to the drawing board, for sure.

Old and slow said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Butkus51 said...

reminds me of Joe not long ago when someone from a forgein country told Joe to "just sign this" and Joe shuffled over and did it like a big boy.

Nobody knows what it was.

Enough about that, did you see the pants he was wearing?

Kevin said...

A dog would never do that to you.

Iman said...

“I wonder what else it does!”

It slices, dices and it cures toenail fungus.

Wait… there’s more!

Original Mike said...

"You would think it raining if Elon pissed on your leg but told you it was rain."

That comment would be much more apt to the old Twitter, which we now know to have been a propaganda arm of the State.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Maybe that's Elon's extremely strange humor showing through again, as a riff on those annoying ads that go to a Web site instead of closing when you click the tiny X in the URH corner.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

I like the idea of ridding "twitter" as the name. Not sure I like "X"

Why? Does the name change the functionality or utility of the app?

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

It was jarring to see the 'X' on my phone where the TwitterBird icon used to be. Kinda strange that the app can manipulate my phone that way without my say-so. I wonder what else it does!

LOL if that manipulation bothered you then you really ought to follow up on your curiosity and see just what all those apps are doing inside your phone out of sight. It's the main reason I nuked Instagram and others from my devices.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Geez that was FAST, MeadHouse!

Rabel said...

"You're going to have to elaborate. I just went and browsed some posts anonymously."

You may be signed in on a Google or Apple account. If you don't clear your browser cache that sign-in from a previous action will still be open. I can't read X threads anymore myself beyond the first screen.

As for the branding, it's awkward to reference and is easily jumbled up with the myriad uses of X. I don't get it, but I didn't think the reusable rocket plan would work either.

Rabel said...

At least they can't blame the boomers for the current gerontocracy or for Musk. I'm sure some will try.

Rabel said...

It's like somebody left the racks unlocked in a San Fran CVS up in here.

Rabel said...

I think I've got it - Musk was smoking a doob while reading Maya Angelou and listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd on the earbuds. Multitasking gone wrong.

Rabel said...

Get your own damn blog, Rabel, she will say when she returns.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

When the big black X showed up on my phone, my immediate reactions was, damn, that thing's ugly.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"Some behavioral adjustment required."

There's no way that wasn't the intention. In what way exactly, I don't know. Blathering in Althouse's comments is the closest I've ever gotten to social media.

rehajm said...

You may be signed in on a Google or Apple account. If you don't clear your browser cache that sign-in from a previous action will still be open. I can't read X threads anymore myself beyond the first screen.

Interestingly I am Google signed in here but still no X for me.

Rit said...

Find the X-spot and enjoy.

Iman said...

“Little Ditty, 'bout Mitch and Dianne,
Two dead Corpses Trying to Out-Biden Biden"

Mason G said...

"When I see an "X" in the corner of an image I see on screen, it feels as though clicking on it will make it go away. Now, clicking on an "X" is supposed to feel like a way to take me onto The Website Formerly Known as Twitter. But my instinct is to click when something is annoying me, not to click when I want more."

Do you suppose there is nobody at Twitter/X who thought of this, or that it would be perceived as a problem by some users?

Me neither.

Drago said...

Dumb Lefty Mark: "Yes, it's bot farms not incompetence or advertiser demands."

LOL

Nice try.

There are an estimated 20 to 30 million lines of code from the incompetent censorious Twitter 1.0 morons that will need to be gutted and completely rewritten to achieve the goals of X.

Even as new funtionality and long delayed improvements and increased transparency is delivered almost daily with just 1/7th the number of Twitter 1.0's hack lefty totalitarian workforce.

The current team keeps finding magical little lefty totalitarian algorithms and rules feeding the strange disruptions via the stalinists rube goldberg code apparatus.

Its going to take a little longer than 9 months to bring this clunky Twitter 1.0 code up to modern standards and functionally sufficient to deliver the Everything App.

But all of that is so far beyond Dumb Lefty Mark's ken that I might as well be trying to describe the space program to a neanderthal.

On second thought, that would be easier.

Mark said...

Yes, Drago, all this stability gives me great confidence that people are eager to let Elon's company manage their banking and payments too.

No blue check? Only limited banking for you.

Yeah, that sounds so much better than using the payment system my bank already supports... you can go ahead and link your accounts to X, I don't see a lot of people looking for that.

Rusty said...

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...
"Some behavioral adjustment required."

"There's no way that wasn't the intention. In what way exactly, I don't know. Blathering in Althouse's comments is the closest I've ever gotten to social media."
Me too.
Jeese, Mark. For a progressive that's very un-progressive of you. Don't you want to embrace the future? Did Musk piss on YOUR leg? In your Cheerios?

Drago said...

The Continuing Dumbness Escapades Of Dumb Lefty Mark: "Yes, Drago, all this stability gives me great confidence that people are eager to let Elon's company manage their banking and payments too."

LOL

Yes, the X team has not yet swept out all the "broken glass" and pulled up and replaced all the "rotted planks" of the dilapidated House of Twitter 1.0 Team of Authoritarian Censors yet, even as new foundations for the future are being laid and the increasingly desperate Dumb Lefty Mark, who assured us X would not survive and Threads was the devastating Killer App That Was Already Bringing Down X is lurching about mindlessly to find something, anything, every single day, to try and justify his daily myopic anti-Musk business rants.

It's hilarious!

Dumb Lefty Mark handles the dumb anti-Musk anti-X commetary.

readering handles the anti-Musk Death of Tesla commentary...though decidedly not as frequently lately...for obvious reasons

The Hopeless gadfly attempts to buffoonishly cut and paste his way to Faux Rocket Scientist poster status while dishing the anti-Musk abti-SpaceX idiocy. This never turns out well for gadfly as you can imagine.

And fellow far-left LLR-democratical and Violent Homosexual Rage Rape Fantasist Chuck plays his Lefty Talking Points Pusher role by attacking Musk in general ways.

Its all so hilariously consistent and in the end the ONLY thing driving all of it is Musk's refusal to act as a New Soviet Democratical Party Apparatchik Censor.

Once Musk went the other way the New Soviet democratical NPC's went "active"!

hpudding said...

That’s far from the only problem with it. It’s a branding nightmare. He’s been fixated with “X” ever since the PayPal board wisely shot down his stupid idea of applying it to their company, before forcing him out. And of course there’s the other child he spawned with one of his baby mama’s that he legally named “X AE A-Xii.” No joke.

So continues the death spiral of Twitter. Conservatives sucked all the value out of it as a place for legitimate media to post blurbs as they converted it into a meaningless right-wing cesspit of bigotry, ignorance and conspiracy. All so that its stupid new owner could stick up for “free speech” - by apparently agreeing to more government censorship requests than ever before. Authoritarians in Turkey, India and others all had a friend in Musk.

https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-elon-musk-twitter-has-approved-83-of-censorship-requests-by-authoritarian-governments.html

How shocking to learn how inept an autistic conservative would be at running anything related to “social” or “media.”

hpudding said...

Oh well. I guess that should put an end to any illusions that “conservative” and “innovate” belong in the same sentence. Let alone the same company.

Drago said...

Puddin: "So continues the death spiral of Twitter."

LOL

Previous Failed "headlines":
The death spiral of Tesla.
The death spiral of Spacex
The death spiral of the Boring Company

And on it goes.

Just admit it pudding, you're pissed about free speech and Musk knocking Biden's ChiCom paymasters out of the global space launch lead.

Well, the bad news for you, at least for now, is your soviet-weaponized govt cant quite corruptly remove Musk from the scene and just hand his assets to your fellow lefties.

Yet.

Drago said...

hpudding: "Oh well. I guess that should put an end to any illusions that “conservative” and “innovate” belong in the same sentence. Let alone the same company."

Could you repeat that?

I couldn't quite hear you over the din of the revolutionary rapid iteration methodologies of the Musk R&D and engineering groups in multiple companies that have already changed the world.

Would you like to try again? You seem anxious to do so
.

And while you're at it, can you explain the implosion of Threads user numbers and complaints about the platform that was going to crush X?

I mean, I know you can't. But would you like to try?

Rusty said...

He's not a conservative, puddin'. Far from it.

Mason G said...

"He's not a conservative, puddin'. Far from it."

Anyone to the right of Lenin is a conservative according to some people.

Rusty said...

Mason G.
This is the level of intelligence of the left. Musk who heretofore has never let on his political affiliation. He buys a social media company that routinely bars more conservative views and conservative humor from their platform. He alows the formerly barred people to speak on his platform.For the hpuddin's and Marks of this world that makes Musk a conservative. What is more revealing is that the hpuddins amd Marks are actively against free speech.

Mark said...

"actively against free speech"

Funny, you keep talking about situations which have nothing to do with the 1st Amendment when you claim we oppose free speech.

Thanks for the BS talking points, but a connection to reality is also needed

Rusty said...

Mark. Why did Musk buy Twitter? C'mon, man. Connect the dots.