Elon Musk, owner of Twitter, has announced that the platform will reintroduce headlines into the previews of article links. It seems our complaints have made a difference.
Twitter removed automatic article headlines and their subtitle text last month because Elon Musk didn’t like how the news appeared on the social network.
“In an upcoming release, X will overlay the headline on the top portion of a URL card’s image,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday from his Twitter account.
A change requested by all users of the social network
The announcement came less than two hours after Musk inadvertently demonstrated how the removal of headline previews on Twitter / X severely reduced the platform’s functionality.
When sharing a Reuters article about OpenAI (which is indeed concerning), the embattled billionaire simply stated, “Extremely concerning!”—a statement lacking context without the link.
It’s not clear if these or other unintelligible links from Musk are related to his decision to bring back article headlines. Considering his track record of whimsically changing things on Twitter / X, it can’t be completely ruled out.
Twitter / X users immediately began criticizing Musk for reinstating a feature that, in the opinion of many, should never have been arbitrarily removed.
In response, Elon Musk hastened to insist that his headline previews will be different from before, as they’ll appear over the article image rather than below it.
” The headline will be on the overlaid image at the top, with the URL overlaid at the bottom, as it is now, without additional vertical pixels,” Musk wrote. “I hate those giant, ugly URL cards.”
Certainly, one could argue that if Musk had wanted to redesign Twitter / X’s headline previews, it would have made much more sense to do so initially instead of removing them altogether.
The initial removal of headline previews had a significant negative impact on the accessibility of Twitter / X, making the platform much harder to navigate for users relying on assistive technology.
