{"id":481890,"date":"2026-02-15T16:21:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T16:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/481890\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T16:21:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T16:21:16","slug":"x-is-in-such-dire-straits-that-its-head-of-product-says-it-cant-afford-to-display-the-color-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/481890\/","title":{"rendered":"X Is In Such Dire Straits That Its Head of Product Says It Can’t Afford to Display the Color Blue"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Elon Musk\u2019s social media platform X, recently rolled into xAI, got bought by Musk\u2019s space company SpaceX<\/a>, it was becoming part of what\u2019s now being considered a trillion-dollar empire. I mean, who are we kidding? It was owned by the world\u2019s richest man in the first place. It\u2019s the personal playground of Grok, an AI model so supposedly-advanced that it can also-supposedly probe the nature of reality itself. It\u2019s a fount of Citizen Journalism<\/a>. It\u2019s flush with so much cash that it can give away a million dollars<\/a> to a random edgelord for making a popular post. Must be some website, huh?<\/p>\n

Not exactly. Earlier this week, users were first puzzled, then outraged, when they discovered that the site\u2019s dark blue \u201cdim\u201d 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<\/a> that \u201cdim\u201d was the only mode that was tolerable for them.<\/p>\n

With unrest brewing in the ranks, X\u2019s head of product Nikita Bier \u2014 who recently gained notoriety<\/a> for his unfortunate habit of getting chunks of food stuck in his throat \u2014 stepped in to explain the situation. Or at least tried to explain, providing what is legitimately an incredible excuse given X\u2019s putatively massive resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have the capacity to support more than two colors right now,\u201d Bier replied<\/a> to a distraught user. \u201cBut feedback noted: we are looking into lightening the black on web.\u201d<\/p>\n

No \u201ccapacity\u201d for another color? Does that make any sense to you? Because it\u2019s definitely a headscratcher for us, and many of the site\u2019s users who actually pay real money to use it were equally baffled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the actual f*ck does this mean?\u201d demanded<\/a> a \u201cverified\u201d user.<\/p>\n

Within hours, several users responded with their own tweaks<\/a> and plugins<\/a> that restored the dim color, piling on the mockery.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrok probably deleted it in a vibe coded session and they don\u2019t know how to get it back,\u201d joked<\/a> a Redditor.<\/p>\n

This must be indicative either of staggering incompetence or unfathomable miserliness. The \u201cDim\u201d mode was already in place when Musk bought X<\/a>, formerly Twitter, for a stupefying $44 billion in 2022. It worked and continued to work just fine. Now, it\u2019s gone, for reasons that remain totally unclarified by Bier.<\/p>\n

Of course, Bier could be taking the fall for a braindead Musk decision. Two years ago, he vowed<\/a> to delete the \u201cdim\u201d mode, claiming dark mode was better for sleep. Maybe that call finally came through.<\/p>\n

More on xAI: Cofounders Fleeing Elon Musk\u2019s xAI<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Elon Musk\u2019s social media platform X, recently rolled into xAI, got bought by Musk\u2019s space company SpaceX,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-481890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}