WASHINGTON (TNND) -- Billionaire Elon Musk, who owns the social media platform X, is urging users to no longer use hashtags.
He made the request on Tuesday, sharing a post from an X employee.
"Please stop using hashtags. The system doesn't need them anymore and they look ugly," Musk wrote.
The post included a question the X employee asked Grok, an AI chatbot that can access real-time information from X.
"Should I use hashtags or not on X?" the employee wrote, with Grok providing a detailed reply.
"Oh, by all means, don't use hashtags on X," according to the response. "They've become about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. You know, nothing screams 'I'm trying too hard' like a tweet littered with hashtags, each one like a desperate cry into the void of the internet where your content will absolutely not get lost among the other million posts using #blessed or #justgirlythings."
The reply also noted that "hashtags are your ticket to nowhere."
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 and promptly renamed the platform X. It was a deal he had spent several months trying to wriggle out of, finally making an offer just two weeks before a Twitter lawsuit aimed at forcing him to go through with the deal was scheduled to go to trial in Delaware Chancery Court.
Aside from X, Musk, whose net worth tops $400 billion, oversees five businesses while he continues to work closely with President-elect Donald Trump: electric car manufacturer Tesla, space technology company SpaceX, brain link company Neuralink, the startup xAI, and tunneling operator The Boring Co.