X, formerly known as Twitter, is testing a new way of handling links on its iOS app — a move designed to keep users inside the platform longer and boost engagement with posts that contain external URLs. The change subtly alters how links behave: instead of opening a web page that fully takes over the screen, X will now collapse the original post to the bottom of the interface, keeping the like, reply, and repost buttons visible while the linked site loads.
This adjustment addresses a long-standing issue on the platform — posts containing links typically underperform compared to text, image, or video content. Once users clicked a link, they were effectively taken out of the app’s ecosystem, often without returning to engage further. By keeping engagement controls persistent and ensuring the post remains partially visible, X hopes to encourage more interaction and prevent users from drifting away.
The tweak also ties directly into Elon Musk’s broader ambition to transform X into an “everything app,” one that reduces reliance on external platforms for content, commerce, and information. By redesigning link behavior, the company is not only optimizing for engagement but also reinforcing its goal of becoming a self-contained digital hub.
Alongside this interface change, Musk announced plans to overhaul X’s recommendation system. Within the next four to six weeks, X intends to eliminate traditional ranking heuristics — the rule-based signals like likes, reposts, and replies that currently influence visibility — and replace them with an AI-driven model powered by Grok, X’s in-house large language model.
According to Musk, Grok will “literally read every post and watch every video (100M+ per day)” to recommend content based on meaning and relevance rather than popularity metrics. The idea is to surface posts that users are most likely to find interesting, regardless of how much engagement they’ve already received. If successful, this could give smaller accounts or niche creators greater reach, leveling the playing field compared to the current engagement-focused system.
These dual changes — more frictionless link handling and an AI-centered recommendation model — reflect X’s ongoing shift away from its traditional role as a microblogging platform. Under Musk’s ownership, the company has steadily moved toward an integrated platform combining media consumption, payments, and AI-powered personalization. However, this evolution also raises concerns about platform control, user privacy, and the visibility of external content, as X increasingly prioritizes keeping users within its own walls.
Whether these updates improve engagement or simply reshape it in X’s favor remains to be seen, but they mark another decisive step in Musk’s plan to redefine how people interact with content — and how much of that interaction happens without ever leaving the app.
