Elon Musk seems determined to turn his recently acquired social network into something unrecognizable for users. From changing the logo and the name, to shared news no longer displaying the headlines. Twitter is already unrecognizable.
X, formerly known as Twitter, no longer displays the headlines of the articles shared on the platform. Instead, X only shows the main image of the article and the domain it links to.
You can see the differences between the new version of link previews in the Twitter app for iOS and the old version on the web in this comparative image posted by The Verge.
From a social network for news to this: open warfare against newspapers
This change, although very annoying, isn’t a complete surprise. Fortune reported in August that this change was in progress, and X’s owner, Elon Musk, confirmed that the change “came directly from me” and that it would “greatly improve the aesthetics [sic].”
Android users are safe for now, although it’s only a matter of time before this (worse) update reaches Google’s operating system users as well.
Elon Musk has recently been encouraging users to post more content directly on X in an effort to boost engagement on the platform.
He has also stated that the platform’s algorithm “tries to optimize the time spent on X,” which means “links don’t get as much attention,” and that it’s “best to post long-form content on this platform.”
In the opinion of experts, removing headlines makes X harder to use. For instance, posts are less straightforward to analyze at a glance. So, I’m not sure this change will make people post more often, as Elon Musk hopes.
The CEO seems to have forgotten that for a decade, Twitter users primarily used the social network for information. It was always the most interesting one for that reason; Twitter was for the curious. Now, we’re not sure who it’s for anymore.
