Over the weekend, Elon Musk made his support for Donald Trump official by publicly endorsing the former-president shortly after Trump was wounded in the ear by a would-be assassin during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Now, it appears that Musk’s social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, is also displaying support for Trump.
On Thursday, July 18, some X users began to notice that custom icons were appearing next to certain pro-Trump hashtags.
For example, when a X user posts the hashtag #MAGA, a small photo of Trump raising his fist after the shooting, automatically appears next to the hashtag in the post.
X takes things even further with another pro-Trump hashtag #Trump2024. When a user posts #Trump2024, an American flag icon appears beside the hashtag in the post. If a user clicks on that hashtag, as per usual, they are taken to the search page for #Trump2024 which displays other posts containing the hashtag. However, X has added a custom effect to the #Trump2024 search page: A display of American flags raining down on the page.
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X’s pro-Trump custom hashtag icons are a first
X has added emoji-like custom icons next to hashtags before. However, those icons usually appear as part of brand advertising deals for hashtags related to a live event or new movie release. For example, the #AppleEvent hashtag for Apple’s annual iPhone launch event has previously appeared with a custom icon.
Then-Twitter did add custom icons to political-related hashtags before. However, these hashtags were for bipartisan events like Election Day and not for any particular candidate.
The addition of pro-Trump custom hashtag icons appears to be the first time X has added a custom hashtag icon in a partisan matter promoting a specific candidate.
The addition of these custom icons next to these hashtags appeared on the same day Trump is scheduled to give a speech formally accepting his nomination as the official Republican nominee for president on the final day of the Republican National Convention.
It’s unclear at this time if the RNC paid X for these custom hashtag icons. Under usual scenarios, that would seem to be the likely case, as that’s how companies and brands obtain a custom hashtag. Businesses and other users on X cannot create a hashtag icon on their own via the platform. Custom hashtag icons require action by X, the company, itself.
As of publishing, #MAGA and #Trump2024 appear to be the only pro-Trump hashtags given a custom icon by X. The #Biden2024 for President Joe Biden does not appear with any custom hashtag.
Mashable has reached out to X with questions about the scope of this change, whether it is a first-of-its-kind program, and to find out if money changed hands. We will update if we hear back.
