Over the weekend, Elon Musk made his support for donald trump Officials publicly backed the former president shortly after he was punched in the ear by a would-be assassin at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Now, Musk’s social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) appears to be showing support for Trump as well.
However, this is clearly a paid promotion. “This is a commercial product,” Representative X told Mashable in an email. X also links to X’s information page about paid branding.
On Thursday, July 18, some X users start to notice Custom icons appear next to some pro-Trump labels.
For example, when user X posted the hashtag #MAGA, a small photo of Trump raising his fist after the shooting automatically appeared next to the hashtag in the post.
Mix and match speed of light
Tweet may have been deleted
X took things further with another pro-Trump hashtag, #Trump2024. When a user posts #Trump2024, an American flag icon appears next to the hashtag in the post. If users click on the hashtag as usual, they will be taken to a search page for #Trump2024, which displays other posts containing the hashtag. However, X added a custom effect to the #Trump2024 search page: it shows an American flag raining down.
Tweet may have been deleted
X’s custom pro-Trump hashtag icon was the first
X Previously added custom emoji-like icons next to hashtags. The icons appear as part of brand advertising deals for hashtags related to live events or new film releases. For example, #AppleEvent tag Previously, customized icons appeared at Apple’s annual iPhone launch.
Elon Musk will move X and SpaceX headquarters to Texas
Twitter at the time had previously added custom icons to politically related hashtags. However, these labels are for bipartisan events like election day rather than targeting any particular candidate.
The addition of the pro-Trump custom label icon appears to be the first time X has added a custom label icon to a partisan issue promoting a specific candidate. The addition of the custom icons next to the labels comes on the same day that Trump is scheduled to give a speech on the final day of the Republican National Convention to formally accept his nomination as the official Republican nominee.
As of publication, #MAGA and #Trump2024 appear to be the only pro-Trump hashtags given custom icons by X.
Mashable also asked X if this was a first-time promotion. We will update if we hear back.
Updated: July 18, 2024 at 3:19 pm (PDT) This article has been updated to reflect an emailed statement received by Mashable from X.
