X Head of Product Nikita Bier debunked a persistent social media fantasy on Might 31, instantly telling the Vatican’s account that embedding a hyperlink in an X put up doesn’t cut back its attain.
The change adopted @Pontifex, the Vatican’s official account, which posted an excerpt from Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, with a hyperlink to the total textual content on vatican.va. A consumer replied, advising the Pope to append the URL in a threaded reply for higher algorithmic efficiency.
X Head of Product Steps In
Bier entered the thread with a single-line response addressed to the top of the Catholic Church:
“Hey Pope, this isn’t true. Hyperlinks won’t deboost your put up.”
As Head of Product, Bier thus oversees X’s rating and suggestion structure. His correction, subsequently, carries as a lot official weight as any public assertion on the topic can carry.
The assumption that linking to off-platform locations suppresses a put up’s attain has circulated extensively for years. This has pushed many social media groups towards workarounds like reply-threading hyperlinks.
Bier joined X in mid-2025 after constructing TBH and Gasoline, two viral social apps acquired by Fb and Discord. His first yr on the platform has been eventful, and never fully on his personal phrases.
Earlier in 2026, he turned the middle of claims of crypto content material suppression by cryptocurrency creators, who reported declining attain. A creator monetization rollback adopted when Elon Musk paused a revenue-sharing overhaul inside hours of announcement.
Bier has additionally stated the crypto bot spam downside could also be unsolvable with current expertise. Extra just lately, he previewed a crypto product on X to rebuild the platform’s relationship with digital belongings.
The doc he was commenting on carries totally different issues. Pope Leo XIV signed Magnifica Humanitas on Might 15, the one hundred and thirty fifth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII’s foundational textual content on labor and industrialization.
The 42,300-word encyclical on synthetic intelligence argues that technological progress with out corresponding moral growth produces solely a rise in means, with out real human betterment.
Leo introduced the textual content alongside Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah on the Vatican. The product chief’s one-line reply could function a small footnote to that argument.
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