In the annals of social media evolution, few sagas have been as dramatic - or as meme-worthy - as Elon Musk's crusade to transform X (formerly Twitter) into an all-encompassing "everything app." From acquiring the platform in 2022 for a cool $44 billion to rebranding it in a bid to echo the universal scope of WeChat, Musk's vision has often felt like Don Quixote charging at windmills.
One of his most persistent battles? Keeping users glued to X by demonizing external links, particularly those leading to video behemoths like YouTube. But as of late 2025, the winds of change are blowing, and nature, it seems, is healing. X is quietly testing native playback for YouTube videos directly in users' feeds - a feature that could finally concede defeat in the war against the internet's biggest video library.
The Tilting at Digital Windmills: Musk's Anti-Link Philosophy
To understand the significance of this test, we must rewind to the early days of Musk's stewardship. Upon taking the reins, he declared war on what he saw as the platform's parasitic relationship with external sites. "Link rot is a plague," Musk tweeted in 2023, echoing complaints about how outbound clicks siphoned engagement away from X.
The algorithm was tweaked accordingly: posts with external links - especially to competitors like YouTube - were subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) deboosted, meaning they appeared lower in timelines and garnered fewer impressions.
Publishers and creators howled in protest, with traffic from X plummeting by as much as 50% for news outlets in the months following the change.
Musk's rationale was straightforward: Why let users wander off to YouTube's greener pastures when X could host everything natively? He poured resources into video features, extending upload limits to two hours for premium users and launching a nascent creator revenue-sharing program. The dream was a self-sustaining ecosystem where journalists, podcasters, and vloggers would ditch their silos and flock to X for long-form content. "Everything app," indeed - payments, messaging, videos, all in one hyper-engaging bundle.
Yet, the windmills fought back. YouTube's algorithmic wizardry and monetization muscle proved too formidable. Creators, wary of fragmenting their audiences, stuck to the platform where billions of hours of watch time were already bankable. X's video uploads spiked initially - some influencers experimented with hour-long rants or tutorials - but mass adoption never materialized.
Why blur your carefully cultivated subscriber base across platforms? And crucially, X's video monetization remains a pipe dream for most: eligibility requires 5 million impressions over three months, a threshold that excludes all but the platform's elite. As one mid-tier YouTuber quipped on X last month, "I'll upload my 20-minute essay to X when they pay me 20% of what YouTube does. Spoiler: Never."
Also read: The Future of Content Monetization on Twitter After Linda Yaccarino’s Departure
The Long-Form Mirage: Journalists and Bloggers Stay Stubbornly External
Musk's grander fantasy - of X supplanting Substack, Medium, and even newsroom CMSes for long-form text and video—fared even worse. He envisioned a renaissance where reporters filed "lon reads" (as he once typo'd) directly to X, fostering real-time discourse without the pesky detour of a paywall or external site. Early incentives like the $1 million-a-month creator payout pool were dangled, but the uptake was tepid. Legacy media houses, burned by algorithm whims, preferred their own domains. Independent bloggers, meanwhile, valued the permanence and SEO benefits of owning their content.
Data bears this out: A 2025 Pew Research study found that only 12% of U.S. journalists now cite X as their primary publishing venue, down from 28% pre-Musk. The rest? They're linking out, windmills be damned. X's response has been a grudging pivot. Enter Nikita Bier, X's head of product and a Musk confidant known for his no-nonsense app design chops (he's the mind behind BeReal's authenticity push). Just a few weeks ago, in mid-October 2025, Bier unveiled an updated in-app browser, promising that external links would no longer be "pessimized" - industry jargon for algorithmically kneecapped.
In a thread that racked up over 50,000 likes, Bier explained the tweak: "For creators, a common complaint is that posts with links tend to get lower reach. This is because the web browser covers the post and people forget to like or reply. So X doesn’t get a clear signal whether the content is any good." The fix?
Links now collapse to the bottom of the screen during browsing, keeping the original post visible for quick engagement. It's a subtle UI hack, but one that could boost signals to the algorithm, potentially restoring some lost reach. Bier even tossed in a nod to journalists: "Reporters and other link-sharing creators— this is for you." Musk himself chimed in with a laconic "Good," but insiders whisper it's a sign of algorithmic détente, not outright surrender.
YouTube in the Feed: The Olive Branch to Google's Giant
If the browser update was a white flag to publishers, the latest test - inline YouTube playback - is a full-on truce with Alphabet's empire. Spotted by eagle-eyed users in beta builds of the X iOS app around early November 2025, the feature embeds YouTube videos natively into the timeline.
No more tapping a link and tumbling into the YouTube app or a clunky web view; videos now autoplay (muted, of course) just like X's homegrown clips, complete with a subtle "YT" badge for transparency.
Whispers from X's engineering circles suggest the test is limited to a small cohort in the U.S. and Europe, mirroring a similar (but short-lived) experiment back in 2021 under pre-Musk Twitter. That trial allowed seamless iOS playback but fizzled amid concerns over view-count attribution—does an inline play count as a "view" for creators' analytics?
This time, with X's video ambitions more mature, the stakes feel higher. Early feedback is glowing: "Finally, no app-switching mid-scroll," tweeted one tester. But skeptics point to the irony - Musk's 2023 rants about "YouTube leeches" now giving way to cozy integration.
Technically, it's a win for user retention: Studies show context-switching (like flipping apps) drops session times by 30%. For YouTube creators, it's a boon too - cross-platform discovery without the friction. Yet, it underscores X's maturation pains. With ad revenue still lagging (projected at $2.5 billion for 2025, per eMarketer), leaning on external content feels like pragmatic evolution rather than revolutionary zeal. As Bier put it in a follow-up post, "We're building for what users actually do, not what we wish they'd do."
Also read:
- TikTok Overhauls Monetization Program: Creators to Earn Up to 70% Revenue Plus 20% Bonuses
- LinkedIn Launches Video Monetization Program for B2B Creators
- How YouTuber and Indie Hacker Marc Lou Tackled the Fake Revenue Screenshot Problem
Nature is Healing: A Platform Comes Full Circle
Three years into the Musk era, X stands at a crossroads. The "everything app" dream endures - Grok AI integrations, X Payments beta, even rumored NFT marketplaces - but it's tempered by reality. Tilting at windmills may have scorched some bridges, but concessions like the YouTube test and link-friendly browser signal a platform learning to coexist. Creators might still hoard their long videos on YouTube, and journalists their bylines on personal sites, but at least the doors are cracking open.
In the end, perhaps the true "everything" isn't monopoly, but interoperability. As X heals its wounds, users win: a feed that's less fortress, more forum. And somewhere, Don Quixote lowers his lance, muttering, "Maybe those weren't giants after all." Nature, indeed, is healing.
