Elon Musk has announced that X (formally Twitter) will bring back article headlines, though with a different formatting.
Last month, Musk announced that X will be removing headlines from articles posted on the platform. The X owner believed that the move would “greatly improve the esthetics” of the site. However, in a rare display of course correction, Musk now announced that headlines will return.
Rather than headlines returning to their original format, X will display the article title in the “upper portion of the image of a URL card.” In response to @WholeMarsBlog, Musk states that “no extra vertical pixels” are being used.
In an upcoming release, 𝕏 will overlay title in the upper potion of the image of a URL card
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2023
The original change to the headlines on X posed a number of issues for the user base. As one can imagine, cutting headlines caused a lot of context to be lost when sharing articles. Thus, many began having to clarify and write out the headlines as part of the post’s text. It also became a cause for concern when the legitimacy of some articles and the spread of misinformation became apparent thanks to the change.
In the past, Musk has expressed how he doesn’t like supporting outbound links as it takes from the engagement on X. He’s gone as far as to try and convince journalists to publish directly on X for “more freedom to write and a higher income.” Musk has also been vocal about supporting “citizen journalism” over publications, leading to changes such as the above.
In the ongoing and contentious battle with the media, X recently filed a lawsuit against Media Matters. The platform believes the group had been misleading the public with a smear campaign using dishonest research. Media Matters claims it found ads posted alongside pro-Nazi posts, leading to big advertisers like Disney, IBM, Warner Bros. Discovery, Sony, Comcast and NBCUniversal pausing their ads. This also occurred after Musk was found to be agreeing with an antisemitic theory published on X.
