X kills headlines from links to news articles

NEW DELHI: As Elon Musk on Tuesday invited journalists to publish directly on X (formerly Twitter) and earn a higher income, he started stripping headlines and text from news articles shared on the platform.

On X, posts with news articles only included the lead image and the URL, stripping out the headline and text and links displayed only an article’s lead image.

“This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the aesthetics,” Musk informed via a post.

Earlier, he said that if you’re a journalist who wants more freedom to write and a higher income, “then publish directly on this platform!”.

A follower reacted: “Then give us better tools.”

Meanwhile, Musk has now pushed for X to develop a format for news articles where they only show a lead image and the source URL.

The image would still serve as a link to the article. The new change may be to reduce the height of individual posts so users’ timelines display more content.

Another X user reacted to the new change:

“Aesthetics are one thing, knowing what you’re going to read to want to click on it in the first place is another.”

“While I’ve seen many of your changes greatly benefit the platform & the people using it, (and even some I wasn’t skeptical of,) I really don’t think this one is a good idea,” the Musk follower posted.