Ever been ‘unfriended’ and not told about it? It’s probably best to get used to it after Elon Musk said Twitter (“X”) is considering getting rid of ‘likes’ and repost figures on posts. The move would simply stop showing the number of likes and reposts that a post has received, though the creator of the post would still see it on their end.Musk outlined the changes — the biggest since he bought the company in 2022, — at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in New York.It comes after a new update to the platform that allows it to harvest users’ fingerprints, retinal scans, voice and face recognition and keystroke patterns.The update would mean that anyone who uses fingerprint verification to log in to the app from their phone, posts selfies or videos to the platform or speaks their mind on X 'spaces' could see their biometric data catalogued by the company. Last summer, Musk said he intended to remove the ability to ‘block’ other users across every aspect of the site, excluding private direct messages..His comments yielded an outpouring of concern from paying subscribers who compared ‘block’ to ‘self-defence’ under the second amendment of the US constitution.It comes after Musk last year directed engineers at the company to adjust the algorithm to boost his posts on users timelines. In February of 2003, Musk allegedly threatened to fire software engineers after a Tweet by Joe Biden received more engagement hits than his own.In June, he was accused of trashing free speech commitments for reneging on a deal to air a documentary called ‘What is a Woman’ which he claimed ‘misgenders’ transgendered people, which he later claimed was a mistake by staffers who called it hateful.
