When Elon Musk’s social media platform X, recently rolled into xAI, got bought by Musk’s space company SpaceX, it was becoming part of what’s now being considered a trillion-dollar empire. I mean, who are we kidding? It was owned by the world’s richest man in the first place. It’s the personal playground of Grok, an AI model so supposedly-advanced that it can also-supposedly probe the nature of reality itself. It’s a fount of Citizen Journalism. It’s flush with so much cash that it can give away a million dollars to a random edgelord for making a popular post. Must be some website, huh?
Not exactly. Earlier this week, users were first puzzled, then outraged, when they discovered that the site’s dark blue “dim” theme had suddenly disappeared for web browsers. Now, only two options remained: have your eyeballs seared by an assault of all white, or be met with the strain of reading text on a background of all black. And aesthetic qualms aside, some users with astigmatism complained that “dim” was the only mode that was tolerable for them.
With unrest brewing in the ranks, X’s head of product Nikita Bier — who recently gained notoriety for his unfortunate habit of getting chunks of food stuck in his throat — stepped in to explain the situation. Or at least tried to explain, providing what is legitimately an incredible excuse given X’s putatively massive resources.
“We don’t have the capacity to support more than two colors right now,” Bier replied to a distraught user. “But feedback noted: we are looking into lightening the black on web.”
No “capacity” for another color? Does that make any sense to you? Because it’s definitely a headscratcher for us, and many of the site’s users who actually pay real money to use it were equally baffled.
“What the actual f*ck does this mean?” demanded a “verified” user.
Within hours, several users responded with their own tweaks and plugins that restored the dim color, piling on the mockery.
“Grok probably deleted it in a vibe coded session and they don’t know how to get it back,” joked a Redditor.
This must be indicative either of staggering incompetence or unfathomable miserliness. The “Dim” mode was already in place when Musk bought X, formerly Twitter, for a stupefying $44 billion in 2022. It worked and continued to work just fine. Now, it’s gone, for reasons that remain totally unclarified by Bier.
Of course, Bier could be taking the fall for a braindead Musk decision. Two years ago, he vowed to delete the “dim” mode, claiming dark mode was better for sleep. Maybe that call finally came through.
More on xAI: Cofounders Fleeing Elon Musk’s xAI
