X, formerly known as Twitter, has started to roll out ads that can neither be blocked nor reported—another bizarre move following the countless others initiated by owner Elon Musk.
The ads don’t even state their true nature, and they don’t disclose their advertisers as well, British journalist and social media expert Matt Navarra claimed. They supposedly just appear on users’ “For You” feeds as posts containing some text and a photo.
In an attempt to appear like organic posts that would come from actual humans, the ads also have a fake avatar, according to Mashable, which first reported on the issue.
These posts seemingly appeared to be similar to chumbox ads, or the kind of ads that you only see when checking out questionable content, and are designed to drive traffic to other sites. X users who have seen the new ads were allegedly taken to a third-party website in a new window when clicked anywhere within the posts.
Unbox was unable to find such ads while browsing through X, but that could be because the change is only live in certain regions such as North America and Europe.
Needless to say, those who were targeted by these ads were understandably a bit… “annoyed” upon seeing them.
“What even is this X? On my following feed, we now just have random posts with no username, not a specified ad, no mechanism to report or engage with… This platform has been broken for a while but it feels utterly in shambles these days,” user @aMarkzzz wrote in a post.
X has not announced anything regarding the reported changes. Not a good sign, especially since the platform has repeatedly been criticized for its lack of consistency and transparency following its $44 billion buyout by Musk, the head of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.
Should X officially reveal and acknowledge the new ad format, it will probably come as no surprise to many. After all, Musk, who is the richest man on earth with a reported net worth of $259 billion, has not always made the most rational decisions when it comes to the handling of his social media platform.
