Elon Musk has a new vision for his new X.com platform.
The Chief Twit recently confirmed that he is planning to strip headlines from news articles shared on X.com to better highlight a user's thoughts.
Musk has yet to reveal when this change will become official on X.com.
Less Is More
Musk wants posts with links to news articles to be about users' thoughts about them. As first reported by Fortune, and then confirmed by Musk himself, X.com may only display the lead image and the URL of a news article on posts on the platform.
As of press time, X.com still uses Twitter's "Preview Cards" when users post news articles on the platform. Mashable said that these preview cards consist of an image, a link, a headline, and a summary of the article, which doesn't count against X.com's character limits.
There are two reasons why Musk wants to push through with his plan. According to 9to5Mac, removing the headlines would free up space in users' timelines to show more posts. It would also force journalists to write their articles directly on X.com since his plan will do away with most of the elements of Twitter's preview cards.
Musk even encouraged writers and journalists to write their articles on X.com on his personal account. He even said they could earn more and have more freedom to write when they switch over to X.com.
The new Twitter logo rebranded as X, is pictured in Paris on July 24, 2023, on the account of it's owner Elon Musk, after he changed his profile picture late on July 23, 2023, to the company's new logo, which he described as "minimalist art deco," and updated his Twitter bio to "X.com," which now redirects to twitter.com.
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Interestingly, Musk believes that the change will improve the platform's aesthetics greatly. However, Musk's statement could be connected to the first reason 9to5Mac stated.
Tech Crunch's source within X.com revealed similar reasons why Musk wants to push his plan through. Aside from freeing up space in users' timelines to show more posts, Musk also (allegedly) believes that removing headlines from the preview cards will reduce clickbait.
Musk's plans don't come as a surprise after his decision to throttle traffic to competing sites and certain news outlets on X.com. The Chief Twit has been throttling internet traffic to Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and even The New York Times.
Although X.com's advertisers allegedly didn't like Musk's plan, the Chief Twit is reportedly planning on going through with the plan anyway. A recent update to X.com's mobile version introduced overlaying URL links over images on news articles, which hides the accompanying short description of articles though the headlines are still visible.
Impact On Writers, Journalists
Should Musk's plan become the norm on X.com, journalists and writers would encounter difficulties in attracting readers through the platform. Without the headline to catch users' attention, they will simply skip over articles on their timelines.
The opposite is also true - if a writer/journalist isn't an X Premium subscriber they couldn't write an attractive article on X.com due to the character limit. There won't even be any monetary payment for such an effort; X.com has been failing to pay verified creators on time, if at all.
Additionally, the program to pay verified creators on X.com is only available in the US, which could be a dealbreaker for most writers worldwide. It will be some time before writers/journalists consider posting their work on X.com instead of doing so on their websites.
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