Elon Musk’s X adds feature to block links in replies

App researcher Nima Owji was the first to spot the feature late last week. Christopher Stanley, senior director for security engineering at X, confirmed its authenticity in a reply, writing “My team built this.”

My team built this.

— Christopher Stanley (@cstanley) July 19, 2024

The feature is not yet available to the majority of users. It’s unclear if the service will only be available to Premium users, who pay a monthly fee, or if it will be offered more broadly (or, for that matter, at all, ultimately).

The move could reduce the amount of spam users see, especially as the social media site wages an ongoing war with bots, which flood X with links to sites that are often infected with malware or viruses.

While that’s certainly good, it also could prevent the free flow of information as people back up their points with legitimate data sources. It also risks people only reinforcing their own beliefs without facing any sort of challenge to them.

In a chaotic election year where misinformation is spreading, that could be especially problematic.

X has introduced a number of new features in the past year. The company reportedly plans to include a Venmo-like payments feature as well as communities focused on adult content. The site also recently made changes that prevent users from seeing who “liked” their posts and has focused more heavily on Musk’s Grok AI project, which is an option for Premium users.