X stopped displaying headlines on posts linking to news articles on both its mobile app and desktop website late Wednesday, following through on what its owner Elon Musk said was an effort to improve how the platform, formerly Twitter, looks.
X's latest Elon Musk-mandated design change hides headlines from posts which link to news stories.
Links to news stories on X were previously displayed as “cards,” including the article’s lead image, a headline, and a one-line summary.
Now adding the link to a news story only displays a lead image—which is clickable and links to the news story—with a small watermark at the bottom left showing the name of the news website.
The change could have an impact on X’s ability to drive traffic to news outlets as the design change makes it hard to distinguish between tweets with photos and tweets with news links.
The change first appeared on X’s mobile apps on Wednesday evening and started showing up on the website later at night.
The change appears to be retroactive as well, which means, news links posted before the change also no longer display the headline.
X’s plans to implement this change were first reported by Fortune in August. At the time, Musk confirmed that the redesign was coming from him directly and said it “will greatly improve the esthetics.” The Fortune report also said Musk believes hiding the headlines would “help curb clickbait” and “reduce the height of tweets.”
Over the past few months, Musk has been attempting to get more creators and journalists to publish their content directly on the platform. The billionaire even tweeted back in August: “If you’re a journalist who wants more freedom to write and a higher income, then publish directly on this platform!”. Earlier this year, Musk urged the likes of MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and former CNN anchor Don Lemon to upload their evening news shows directly to the platform, following in the footsteps of ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Musk’s attempts to draw high-profile content creators to the platform are part of his wider push to transform X into a so-called “everything app.” X has made other changes to how it delivers news content, including throttling access from the platform to websites that Musk has publicly feuded with. In August, an investigation by the Washington Post found that X added a five-second delay to links to certain websites including the New York Times and Reuters. This was reversed after the Post’s story was published.
Earlier this week, Axios reported that top news sites have witnessed a major slump in traffic from Facebook and X over the past year. The report did not mention any particular cause for this dip, but top social media executives have suggested that platforms are deemphasizing such content to avoid “scrutiny, negativity or integrity risks.”