X turned a user’s photos of their children into an ad

Elon Musk-owned social media platform X turned a user’s photos of two small children into a labelled ‘Ad.’

Elon Musk-owned social media platform X turned a user’s photos of their two small children into a labelled ‘Ad,’ which was then shown on another user’s algorithmic feed.

The photos, originally posted by a businesswoman whose profile said she was based in the United Arab Emirates, showed two pictures of small children she said were hers in the post.

The photos were posted on January 6, and had been seen over 134,000 times, as well as bookmarked around 20 times. The user in question had a little over 47,000 followers and had also been verified since June 2024, according to X.

However, the photo was labelled as an ‘Ad’ and appeared in another user’s feed.

Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter, now X, the platform’s monetisation strategy has undergone several updates, along with the algorithm.

“Algorithm tweak coming soon to promote more informational/entertaining content. We will publish the changes to @XEng. Our goal is to maximize unregretted user-seconds. Too much negativity is being pushed that technically grows user time, but not unregretted user time,” Musk posted on January 4, adding that X was working on ways to let users adjust their content feed, to “have what you want at any given moment.”

X was previously criticised for allowing content such as hate speech and pro-slavery posts to stay up.