The Twitter Superfans Trying to Ditch the X Brand
Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as X, some users are still resistingthe change so much that they are finding ways to pretend it didn’t happen. Using specially designed software tools, they are reinstating the old blue-on-white bird image on their devices in place of the new icon—a stylized, white-on-black version of the 24th letter. And they are reverting references to “posts" back to “tweets," along with other user experience options.
“I just find the X so boring, and it’s kind of depressing. It just gives me a negative vibe," said Belinda Davey, a 36-year-old retail worker in Adelaide, Australia. She changed the app icon back to the bird on her mobile phone using a feature on Apple Shortcuts.
Her post on X with a tutorial for how to do it has since garnered more than 1.5 million views. Many user replies also called for an Android version of the workaround. Jettisoning the globally recognized Twitter name and logo is among myriad changes Musk has made to the 17-year-old platform since buying it in October, from upending its old blue-check-mark verification system to creating an algorithmic feed that has heavily featured his own tweets.
Some users have embraced the changes as part of Musk’s effort to reshape the microblogging platform into his vision of an “everything app" that will include offerings from long-form video to financial payments—along with less policing of what people can say on the platform. Eric Wool, a 29-year-old who works as a media coordinator for the Tennis Channel, said he is encouraged by the X rebrand and that it makes him want to use the app more. “The bird was a good start," he added.
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