Posts can be public or private (‘protected’) and include information such as photos, videos, links and location. The ‘For you’ tab includes posts from accounts the user follows or that the app thinks the user will enjoy. The ‘Following’ tab only shows posts by people the user follows. X also shows adverts. X allows users to search for jobs, livestream and join a public audio chat (called a Space). They can follow a ‘Community’ on a theme such as Art, Sports or Politics. A user can send direct messages using X Chat, which are end-to-end encrypted (they cannot be monitored by X).
They can also pay to chat with Grok, which is an AI chatbot within X, or use their X login details to access the Grok website. When Grok was launched it was described as being able to ‘answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems’. The Grok terms of use include urging parents to exercise care in monitoring the use of Grok by their teenagers.
Users who pay for ‘X Premium’ can get a blue checkmark next to their profile name and can do things like edit a post after sharing it. Their identity is not required to be verified and the blue tick itself does not show that ID has been verified. Profiles with a gold or grey checkmark have had their identity verified.
There are no parental controls on X but under 18 accounts are defaulted to ‘Protected posts’. These child accounts have stronger default privacy settings such as only receiving direct messages from accounts they follow, having their precise location disabled and not being shown adverts. Child accounts will not be shown identified mature content or content that is harmful to children (e.g. pornography and self-harm content). General X safety settings also include managing how people can find, contact, or tag a user and see their posts or which Spaces they’re listening to. Users can turn off read receipts and prevent other users from downloading videos they share. They can turn off autoplay (so that videos do not play automatically while scrolling), filter out posts with content such as spam, violence or nudity or containing certain words. They can block and report harmful content. Blocked accounts cannot follow or engage with the user who blocked them, but they can still see that user’s public posts. Users can prevent X from showing personalised adverts and exchanging user data with other businesses or using user data to train X’s AI chatbot.
