Social media is a breeding ground for viral trends, and the latest one is the "click here" trend. Thousands of users are sharing images with a plain white background that boldly says "Click here" in black. But there's more to it than meets the eye. The image also has a down arrow pointing towards the bottom left corner, where you'll find "ALT text." However, this isn't a clickable link! ALT text, short for alternative text, is a feature on X that allows users to describe their photos in words.
The latest one to join the trend is Mumbai Police. Known for witty social media posts, Mumbai Police shared a post on X. They shared an image, which reads, "Click Here". Then, in the image description, they added, "Suspicious link tha, click nai karna tha (Don't click on suspicious links, you can get scammed).
Since being posted, it has collected over 92,000 views on X and an array of comments.
A user wrote, "Thank You Mumbai Police".
Another user commented, "Being vigilant is the responsibility of citizens but nabbing these scammers and bursting it, is the responsibility of @MumbaiPolice I personally feel these scammers should be booked under NSA as they're a threat to growing digitization of nation."
"Congratulations you have looted poor peoples in the name of March ending," the third user wrote.
The "ALT" text was introduced by the platform back in 2016 when the social media company was still known as Twitter.
Announcing the feature Twitter in its blog, in 2016, stated, "Photos have been at the center of some of the biggest moments on Twitter. As a core part of the Twitter experience, it's important that images shared on our platform are accessible to everyone, including those who are visually impaired."
It added, "Starting today, people using our iOS and Android apps can add descriptions - also known as alternative text (alt text) - to images in Tweets. With this update, we're empowering everyone to ensure content shared on Twitter is accessible to the widest possible audience."
"The Alt text is supposed to contain a textual description of what the image contains, to help the visually impaired people understand what the image is about. So, using that text for anything else is a misuse of that feature and goes against web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG)," a user, wrote while explaining the feature.
