'Esthetic nightmare': Elon Musk says hashtags will be banned on X ads starting tomorrow

Elon Musk has announced that hashtags will no longer be permitted in advertisements on X, calling them an “esthetic nightmare” in a post on Thursday. The decision marks the latest step in Musk’s ongoing campaign to distance the platform from long-standing social media norms.

“Starting tomorrow, the esthetic nightmare that is hashtags will be banned from ads on 𝕏 (sic)” he wrote, doubling down on his view that hashtags disrupt visual clarity and are no longer necessary.

This isn’t the first time Musk has taken aim at hashtags. In December 2024, he urged users to stop using them altogether, arguing they were outdated and unattractive. “The system doesn’t need them anymore and they look ugly,” he said at the time, suggesting that the platform’s evolving AI tools could replace the need for traditional tagging.

Musk claims that X’s discovery and search algorithms, now supported by Grok, the AI chatbot developed by his company xAI, can categorise and surface content without relying on hashtags. He believes this shift will enable cleaner, more streamlined advertising and user experiences.

Hashtags have long been a staple of social media, popularised first by Twitter in 2007 as a way to group conversations and trends. But under Musk's leadership, X continues to move away from the conventions that once defined the platform.