X to remove headlines from news links as Elon Musk encourages journalists to publish directly on the site
In yet another big change for X (formerly Twitter), the social media platform will soon change the look of how news stories are displayed in users' feeds.
Right now, news articles are displayed with a small preview card that shows the headline of the story along with a small summary of the text (the latter being web only), plus the source website. But when the new update rolls out, news articles will only be displayed with a link and the story's image -- no additional information or context. The image would serve as a link to the article.
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The change comes from CEO Elon Musk and was announced via a repost from his official account. "This is coming from me directly," he wrote. "Will greatly improve the esthetics." Musk was reposting the unofficial "X News Daily" account, which wrote "NEWS: X is changing how news links show up on the timeline. It will strip out the headline/text so links display only an article's lead image."
This announcement comes only a day after Musk implored members of the media to use his service, writing, "If you're a journalist who wants more freedom to write and a higher income, then publish directly on this platform!"
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The X News Daily account offered a few explanations for the decision, saying "The change is said to help reduce the vertical pixel space that articles take" and "Reportedly, another reason Elon wants to change this is to cut down on clickbait. It could also be another incentive for media to publish articles on X, or at least use the Long post feature to provide more context before the link."
Like last week's announcement that the block feature on X was going to be removed (it's still there as of Tuesday morning), no information about when the change would happen was shared.