X is nudging users to promote their posts with a pointing hand, and people are confused
11:34 PM PDT · October 26, 2026
Some interface changes and nudges, like bright buttons urging you to subscribe in apps, are mildly annoying but easy to ignore. Others are so in your face that you want to throw your phone in a river. X’s new push to get users to promote their posts is firmly in that category.
Over the last 24 hours, a growing number of users have posted that a mysterious hand pointing to the “promote” button suddenly showed up while they were writing a post. This has irked people across the board.
With Halloween around the corner, it could be a prank meant to spook users, though X hasn’t said so. And even users who wanted to promote a post and spend money might be scared off after seeing the hand.
TBPN podcast’s president Dylan Abruscato said that this engagement trick was the “most Nikita-coded thing...
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