• by Colin Kirkland , March 9, 2026

Last week, an X user promoted Elon Musk’s satellite internet company Starlink directly in a feed post, hinting at a potential rollout of a new automated ad format for the social-media platform.

In the post from March 6, X user @levelsio recommended the use of Starlink to another user and X added a clickable link at the bottom of the post that reads “Get Starlink,” effectively turning the user post into an ad for Musk's SpaceX-operated business.

Nikita Bier, X's head of product, responded in the comment section, stating that the company is “trying to make an ad product that isn’t an ad.”

Bier added that it “seemed natural” to hyperlink product recommendations if they are already mentioned organically in user-led conversation.

However, when another user wrote that the users should get an affiliate commission if someone purchases Starlink after clicking the automated link on their post, Bier said, “No, then people will lie,” adding that X “wants to trust recommendations on here.”

The appearance of this automated ad test follows two consecutive merging deals within Musk's business portfolio.

After xAI merged with X last March, SpaceX acquired xAI, creating a $1 trillion ecosystem formed to combine resources and build out artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.

The social-media arm has struggled to rebuild its ad business since Musk's 2022 takeover of the company previously known as Twitter, and continues to experiment with new ways to attract creators and advertisers to the platform.

A recent study from social-edia management platform Buffer shows that despite a recent loss of active users in key markets, X posts are currently experiencing a notable boost in user engagement, making user posts a potentially strategic place to integrate new ad elements.

Introducing a simple promotional link in user posts also follows X’s ongoing plans for a “sleeker” in-stream ad experience, which included the restriction of hashtags or URLs in ad text, the limitation of one emoji per ad, and other visual specificities that strive for the avoidance of "unnecessary clutter or distractions.”

In line with the company's in-feed clean-up goals, Bier recently commented on X that “undisclosed promotions hurt the integrity of the product and lead people to distrust the content they read on X.”

This line of thinking supports both user-centric automated promotional links, as well as last week's launch of “Paid Partnership” labels on posts from creators involved with in-feed advertisements.