X, formerly known as Twitter, is making yet another change to how posts appear on the timeline. This time, the social media platform is bringing back article headlines in posts just over a month after they were removed. The site’s owner, Elon Musk, was pushing for this, arguing that stripping the article headlines and description would “greatly improve the esthetics.” However, the article headlines are coming back in a different format.
There were reports that despite some advertisers not being on board with this change after getting a preview, X still went ahead and removed the article headlines and descriptions. Articles posted on the platform are currently only showing the leading image and the domain it links to.
“In an upcoming release, X will overlay the title in the upper portion of the image of a URL card.” Musk has shared on X. This means that the headlines will appear overlaid on the image of the article and not below it. Following the post, the decision to revert the “annoying change” has been welcomed by many users on the platform. In addition, this will make parsing articles easier and help tidy up the timeline.
Removing headlines doesn’t curb clickbait & misinformation
Contrary to Musk’s opinion that stripping the headlines and pushing for “citizen journalism” will help reduce clickbait and misinformation, recent events have proved it doesn’t. It has come as little surprise that the site is awash with misinformation on the Israel-Hamas war, given the incentives in place for getting the most impressions. Again, it is no surprise that blue-checked creators are the ones mostly spreading misinformation on the platform to get more engagement.
This comes at a time when X is facing challenges raising revenue as many advertisers flee and halt marketing on the platform. Major advertisers such as Apple, Disney, Warner Bros, Sony and IBM have pulled their business citing antisemitism endorsements by some of Musk’s posts. The exodus followed reports that found ads appeared next to pro-Nazi and white nationalist posts. In response, Elon Musk and X are suing the activist group, Media Matters, which had published the reports.
