Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, has started eliminating automatically generated headlines from links to external websites.
This will impact media outlets and potentially reduce traffic to other sites.
Under this new format, when users post links to third-party news articles or websites, the system displays the articles’ lead images and web domains but omits the headlines.
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This deprives readers of crucial context from publishers about their articles.
The modification also seems to affect shared links to non-news websites, while paid advertisements still include headlines.
X has not yet responded to requests for comments regarding this change.
This is part of X’s effort to discourage users from clicking on external links, including those leading to news sites.
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Elon Musk, the owner of X, tweeted the platform’s algorithm aims to optimize the time users spend on X by reducing attention to links.
It implies that people spend less time if they click away from the platform.
Earlier reports about X testing the removal of headlines from article previews prompted Musk to describe the revised format as an aesthetic improvement in August.
However, some experts remain skeptical about Musk’s aesthetic reasoning.
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Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, a journalism professor at Cardiff University, believes this change could be part of a larger strategy by Musk.
She said the move is to undermine news organizations’ reach on the platform.
She said: “Although Elon Musk has framed this as a decision informed by aesthetic considerations, it can be seen as part of a larger trend toward making Twitter/X more difficult for news organizations to use.
“It is likely to have a significant adverse impact on click-through rates, because platform users will no longer have the necessary context to understand the content of links — and therefore little reason to click on them.”
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This could reduce user engagement on X and other news sites, affecting the X’s profitability and external site’s ad revenue.
Elon Musk has consistently positioned traditional news media websites as competitors to X.
Earlier this year, the platform removed verification badges from accounts of some news sites that refused to pay a monthly fee.
X is currently the third-most-used social media platform in the US for news, trailing behind Facebook and YouTube.
