Dogecoin Developer Flays Elon Musk Over New X Transparency Feature

Several people are not pleased with the new transparency feature that was recently added to X, Elon Musk own social media platform and Dogecoin (DOGE) developer Mishaboar is one of those.

“Likes” Gone From the Elon Musk X App

Mishaboar took to X to share his displeasure, noting that the “Like” feature was one of his favorites on the free speech app.

This was so for him because he saw it as a tool that allowed people to be very expressive about their interests within the confines of other user’s accounts. The developer did not agree that removing “Like” amounts will help ensure privacy is preserved. On the other hand, he believes the “bookmark” feature already makes provision for that.

Likes were one of my favorite things on X, because they allowed people to express interests also outside their account’s niche. I do not see what privacy has got to do with it (we had bookmarks if we needed that).

Hiding them (with no way of opting out, to boot) just makes the…

— Mishaboar (@mishaboar) June 15, 2024

Therefore, he thinks hiding the feature makes the X app way less transparent. More seriously, Mishaboar says its makes it more difficult to detect bot behavior.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk and the X team has been trying to combat the activities of bots on the social media app for some time. In October 2023, X announced plans to start testing a new subscription program called ‘Not A Bot’. The program required that new users in New Zealand and the Philippines pay a $1 annual fee to post content and interact with other users.

More Attempt to Combat Bots

The X team claimed that the introduction of the subscription model is not primarily profit-driven but aims to maintain a balance between accessibility for genuine users and curbing unwanted activities on the platform. However , the move still signaled a shift from the traditional model of free social media access. By April 2024, Musk highlighted the need for a total purge, an announcement that suggested the initial program was not entirely successful.

He urged users to report any legitimate accounts that may inadvertently get suspended during the system purge process. Users could contact @XEng for assistance. X users reacted to the news, hailing it as a positive step which will see a great reduction in the number of imposter accounts.

More recently, Elon Musk decided to make new users pay a small fee which he emphasized as critical. Musk noted that such a measure is the “only way” to avert the bot attack effectively. Furthermore, he outlined the obsolescence of traditional bot-detection tools such as CAPTCHA, which AI and troll farms can now easily circumvent.

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