X wants you to spend millions on inactive handles

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Elon Musk’s X (Twitter) is rolling out some new experiments that seem designed to make sure you never, ever leave the app, not even to read an article.

Currently, when you tap a link on X, it opens a browser that completely covers the post you came from. 

The problem? People click away, forget where they were, and engagement tanks. 

X’s latest test changes that. On iOS, posts with links now shrink to the bottom of the screen, while the like, reply, and repost buttons stay visible. 

The goal: keep those dopamine-driven engagement clicks coming, even while you’re halfway through a BuzzFeed listicle.

It’s a small design tweak with big implications. For years, creators have complained that posts with links perform worse. 

X now admits it’s not (just) the algorithm, it’s the UI. The new layout is one more step in Musk’s plan to turn X into an “everything app,” where you read, shop, and scroll without ever escaping its gravitational pull.

We're testing a new link experience, starting on iOS — to make it easier for your followers to engage with your post while browsing links.

For creators, a common complaint is that posts with links tend to get lower reach. This is because the web browser covers the post and… pic.twitter.com/oWraLpPwji

— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) October 19, 2025

But that’s just the start. Musk also announced that X’s recommendation system is about to get a brain transplant.

In about six weeks, he says, the platform will delete all its heuristics, the old rules that favored posts with likes and replies. 

Instead, X’s in-house AI, Grok, will literally read every post and watch every video (100 million-plus per day) to decide what’s interesting. 

In other words, your engagement now depends on what Grok thinks you’re into, not whether your followers do.

And because X is never done monetizing everything, it’s launching a Handle Marketplace for Premium Plus and Business users. 

“Priority” handles will be free, while “rare” ones, like @pizza or @vibes, could cost anywhere from $2,500 to seven figures. 

Lose your subscription, though, and poof, your fancy new handle reverts back.

Between AI-curated feeds, perpetual engagement buttons, and auctioned usernames, X is starting to look less like a social network and more like a digital casino run by a very chatty robot.