X Product Head Nikita Bier Confirms Link Penalty Removed Over A Year Ago, Tells Mark Zuckerberg He Can Post Them Directly

X's head of product Nikita Bier has publicly told Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that he no longer needs to bury links in the replies section of his posts, revealing in the process that the platform quietly stopped penalising link-only posts more than a year ago. The exchange, which played out on X, quickly drew reactions from creators who had spent years working around what they believed was an active algorithmic penalty against posts containing external links.

How the exchange unfolded?

The comment was posted as a reply to Zuckerberg, who had shared a note about Meta's vision for AI and superintelligence. Bier responded, "Hello Mark, you do not need to put the links in replies anymore. Thank you for your attention to this matter," a pointed reference to the long-standing practice, common among X and Twitter users, of posting a link in the replies to a text-only post rather than embedding it directly, a workaround built on the assumption that X's algorithm suppressed the reach of posts containing outbound links. Elon Musk backed up Bier's comment shortly after, replying simply, "We haven't for over a year."

A penalty many users believed was still active

The claim that link posts have not been penalised since roughly mid-2025 caught many users off guard, given how entrenched the reply-link workaround has become across the platform. Reactions ranged from surprise to mockery, with one user pointing out the irony of Bier saying "anymore", which appeared to confirm that such a penalty had, in fact, existed at some point. Others were more critical of how the update was communicated, with one user suggesting that X should have found a clearer way to inform its user base about the change rather than letting people discover it through a reply to Zuckerberg months or years later.

Some evidence the shift was already flagged

X had previously signalled changes to how it treats links in posts. In comments last year, Musk had said that X's algorithm was built by xAI rather than by Bier personally, and that a link post with little accompanying context would still receive weak distribution, while a link paired with a strong description or image would perform better. That suggested the platform's treatment of links had already moved from a blanket penalty toward a more nuanced, content-based evaluation, a shift that appears to align with the mid-2025 timeline Musk referenced in this latest exchange.

Why creators remain cautious

Despite the confirmation from both Bier and Musk, some creators and commentators say they are waiting for harder evidence before abandoning the reply-link habit altogether. X's algorithm has gone through several undisclosed adjustments in recent months, including changes to how content from mutual followers is surfaced and how creator payouts are weighted by audience region, both of which were rolled out with limited public explanation before drawing scrutiny. That pattern of quiet, after-the-fact algorithm changes is a large part of why some users say they will continue testing link placement themselves rather than taking the platform's word for it.

Published on: Wednesday, July 29, 2026, 10:36 AM IST