Twitter/X Starts Hiding Headlines From Article Links in Posts

X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, has started removing headlines from articles shared in posts. Now, users can only see the article’s feature image and the domain of the article on top of it, but it may not be immediately obvious to users that they can read an article by clicking on the lead image.

You can see a before/after comparison below with the post on the left showing the headline of the linked article and its excerpt, while the post on the left just shows the linked article’s lead image and domain. For publishers, the change is obviously not ideal.

Back in August, Elon Musk confirmed that X would opt for a minimalistic approach regarding how news links appear on the platform. “This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the esthetics,” Musk said at the time.

Earlier this week, Musk also made it pretty clear that sharing links on X was no longer recommended. “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. Best thing is to post content in long form on this platform,” Musk explained.

For many years, Twitter/X has been a key platform for journalists and other people working in the media industry, but Musk is trying really hard to encourage content creators to post on X directly, even though X is mostly known as a microblogging platform. And of course, you need an X Premium subscription to post long form content on the platform.

“I almost never read legacy news anymore,” Musk also tweeted earlier this week. “What’s the point of reading 1000 words about something that was already posted on X several days ago?” That is quite a delusional view of what’s really happening on the platform these days.