Today, Elon Musk launched his newest change to X, removing the public visibility of one of its most prominent features: The like.
The move, X said, was designed to help boost engagement and stop people from being afraid to like things.
But it also would have prevented one of then-Twitter’s most memorable moments.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) liking a porn tweet on 9/11.
That tweet, featuring a snippet of an adult film, was quickly unliked. Cruz blamed the incident on a staffer, saying that multiple people have access to the account and that it wasn’t a “deliberate action.” But it quickly became an iconic, often referenced moment on the site because, after all, it’s pretty funny to say that Ted Cruz liked a porn clip on Twitter on 9/11.
According to X’s engineering team, the new policy is that you’ll be able to see the posts that you like, but other people won’t be able to see your own likes at all. Total likes will still show up as a post metric.
That means no more cock-ups like what happened to Cruz, leading to many melancholy memorials.
“RIP to one of the great moments on this website,” posted @jeremysmiles in reaction to the news.
“in honor of twitter making likes private, let us remember when ted cruz liked step-sibling porn on 9/11,” added @stinkypissbitch over a screenshot of the clip in question.
“Hey @tedcruz did you hear they have private likes now?” asked @ClueHeywood over a screenshot from the infamous video.
Other posters saw less humor in the move, writing that it undermined a key feature of the site, to show people appreciation for their posts as well as softly promote them to your followers.
The feature has also been used by internet sleuths to determine a poster’s private political habits. Many thought that the move might have been prompted directly by Musk’s own behavior.
“This is just more childish Elon nonsense,” posted @SpryOld. “He got burned for liking a Nazi post, and now he wants to make all “likes” private so he can like Nazi posts without being canceled. FUCK HIM.”
Cruz didn’t respond to a question from the Daily Dot about whether the new feature had him sighing a breath of relief.
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