X, Formerly Known As Twitter No Longer Sharing Headlines From Articles Because Elon Musk Thinks They Are Ugly
Written by djfrosty on October 5, 2023
Source: Anadolu Agency / Getty / X / Twitter
Elon Musk continues to give people all the reasons to take their business and mess to Threads or any other social platform.
X, formerly known as Twitter, continues its quick descent into social media platform obscurity thanks primarily to Elon Musk’s dumb a** decisions.
Delivering on a promise, X is no longer showing headlines from articles when shared on the platform. The reasoning, of course, is as stupid as ever. Musk believes it will “enhance the esthetics” on the platform he boneheadedly renamed to X.
“This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the esthetics,” Musk said on his personal X account back in August.
The decision to remove headlines could also result from Musk’s disdain for links driving people from the service while revealing that his platform’s content algorithm deprioritizes links.
Musk was not shy in sharing that information in response to a user who shared data revealing the drastic decline in referrals from X and Facebook to websites that deliver news over the last two years.
“Our algorithm tries to optimize time spent on X, so links don’t get as much attention, because there is less time spent if people click away.” Musk said, adding, “Best thing is to post content in long form on this platform.”
WHAT?
X Users Point Out How Dumb This Latest Change Is
As you can imagine, no one wants to read an entire news story in an X post, and this will also not help Musk and his X platform beat those allegations of aiding in the spread of misinformation.
“Along with pushing misinformation, removing the headline posts from articles makes it seem like someone is just making a caption with a photo and not an actual link to a story, which will cause less engagement for certain journalists/news orgs,” one X user wrote.
Matt Eason pointed out on the doomed platform that removing headlines from link previews has “completely broken” accessibility to the stories and could further deter users from clicking on the stories.
We’re just going to continue to pour one out for our former favorite social media platform cause the casket continues to lower into the ground.
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Photos: Anadolu Agency / Getty