X, formerly Twitter, no longer shows headlines for links to news stories shared on the social network. Instead, the platform is now only showing the story’s featured image and the domain it will link you to which is in the left-hand corner of the image.
Following the initial reports in August about the planned change, Elon Musk said the changes would make the posts look better and confirmed in a post that they were “coming from me directly”
The billionaire had earlier said, “If you’re a journalist who wants more freedom to write and a higher income, then publish directly on this platform!”
A day before the changes came into effect on the site, Musk on Tuesday said that he “almost never reads legacy news anymore”
“What’s the point of reading 1000 words about something that was already posted on 𝕏 several days ago?” he wrote.
Since his hostile takeover of the social site in October last year, the platform’s role as a traffic referral source to publishers’ sites has been declining. According to an analysis by Similarweb, X’s referral traffic to a dozen major publishers’ websites declined, on average, by 12% in December 2022 compared to November 2022. Reportedly, in August, the social network also briefly put a five-second delay on loading links to online news outlets and rivals including Reuters, The New York Times, Blue Sky, and Instagram.
