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.
This is, however, apparently paid promotion. “This is a commercially available product,” an X representative told Mashable in an email. X also linked to X’s page of information about paid brand promotion.
On Thursday, July 18, some X users began to notice that custom icons were appearing next to certain pro-Trump hashtags.
For example, when an 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.
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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.
X’s pro-Trump custom hashtag icons are a first
X has added emoji-like custom icons next to hashtags before. Those icons 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.
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Then-Twitter added 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.
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 also asked X whether this is a first-of-its-kind promotion. We will update if we hear back.
UPDATE: Jul. 18, 2024, 3:19 p.m. PDT This article has been updated to reflect an emailed statement Mashable received from X.