X Users Allegedly Seeing Unlabelled Ads That Can’t Be Blocked: Report – News18

Users on X (formerly known as Twitter) are reportedly seeing ads that have no visual indicators suggesting that they are ads. Simply put, some users are being shown unlabelled ads, and users have no way to block or report them, as per a report by Mashable.

Users suggest that these alleged ads don’t have an account associated with them and don’t come with an ‘ad’ tag to indicate that it is one. In addition, users can’t interact with these ads, and can’t like or report them.

Mashable says that it has confirmed that this ad format exists and just consists of text copy, aligned with an image and a “fake avatar.” Moreover, to make the matter worse, the ads allegedly take users to third-party websites when users click anywhere within the ad. The publication further reports that these ads are being displayed in the mobile version of the X apps, but it could be verified if they are available on the web version as well.

Moreover, the publication says that it actually found similar ads sent by users with the same text copy “running through ad networks on Yahoo and Taboola, competitors like RevContent.” Further, the publication revealed that it could not find this “X ad format in the platform’s ad campaign manager so it appears these ads are actually being served by a third-party ad provider.”

Mashable also notes that X has struggled to find new advertisers for the platform after Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and said that half of the platform’s advertisers have stopped running ads since the acquisition.