X Product Head Tells Pope Links Don’t Reduce Reach

On May 31, Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, replied to the Vatican’s @Pontifex after the account posted an excerpt from Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas with a link to the full text on vatican.va. A user had suggested placing the URL in a threaded reply to avoid an alleged reach penalty.

Bier replied: “Hey Pope, this isn’t true. Links will not deboost your post.”

Bier oversees the company’s ranking and recommendation systems, and his comment functioned as a technical clarification from the platform.

For years some social media managers have moved links to replies or used other workarounds because they believed off-platform links reduced visibility.

Magnifica Humanitas was signed on May 15, the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum. The 42,300-word encyclical addresses artificial intelligence and argues that technological progress without ethical development does not produce genuine human betterment. Pope Leo XIV presented the text alongside Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah.

Bier joined X in mid-2025 after creating the apps TBH and Gas, which were later acquired. In his first year on the platform he engaged with creators who reported falling reach for crypto-related posts. He was involved in a paused overhaul of creator monetization and has warned that crypto bot spam may be unsolvable with current technology. He has also previewed a product intended to change X’s relationship with digital assets.

The exchange appeared publicly on X and directly addressed the long-standing technical belief about how links affect post distribution.