X starts removing preview headlines from posts with article links, showing only the lead image and domain name; Elon Musk mentioned the change in August 2023
https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @rickf@indieweb.social : In other words, “please generate needless clicks so I can boost ‘engagement’ on the platform to get more advertisers back, pleeeasseeee....” — https://www.mediaite.com/... Eugen Rochko / @Gargron@mastodon.social : Personally I'm quite pleased with the design of link cards in Mastodon 4.2, they finally feel on par with other types of media attachments. Links make the web go round! @timohakkinen@indieweb.social : This one small change made X about 30-50 % less usable and valuable for me, so I'll cut my usage by 50-75 %. — I've stayed away from vast majority of Elon/Twitter drama, because for the most part I just don't care. Selfish, sure, but majority of the stuff never affected me. … X: Aaron Levie / @levie : @elonmusk I scan tweets to see what news is most interesting to read. Removing headlines puts put too much onus on the OP to put the context in the tweet itself, and requires reading even more text for the consumer. Much better to let the market (including the publishers) decide what... Elon Musk / @elonmusk : @levie Really Aaron, really? You actually believe the media ... wow. Show me a screenshot of before and after and tell me which one is better. Actually. @doctorow : This is the Facebook playbook: you lure in publishers by promising them a traffic funnel ("post excerpts and links and we'll show them to people, including people who never asked to see them"), and then the rug-pull: “Post everything here, don't link to your own site” Aaron Levie / @levie : @Jason ... Yes the original author or publisher will. But anyone sharing an article would never do that, it's too much work. So you can't just post a link to an article with a quick comment anymore. This radically reduces information dissemination. @jason : @paulg ... I'm confused... can't journalists/bloggers just post the headline in the tweet now? Paul Graham / @paulg : @elonmusk @levie He's right, it was better before. What drives me to Twitter initially each day is to see what's going on. The headlines tell me that, even if I don't follow the links. Matt Binder / @mattbinder : X user: i personally dislike this change to the platform and am basing my opinion on what i see with my own two eyes Elon Musk: wow, just believing the media smdh [image] Sar Haribhakti / @sarthakgh : Someone tell him this change impacts the blogosphere across Wordpress, Medium, Substack etc Ironically, I'm spending *less* time in my feed because I am spending more time clicking through to see what the article is about vs just scrolling past based on text in unfurled link [image] Elon Musk / @elonmusk : Pixel Perfect @jon_fischer : Exciting new social media strategy at @slate dot com. [image] Max Tani / @maxwelltani : would be incredible if twitter getting rid of article headlines resulted in the return of clickbait Doug Saunders / @dougsaunders : I can't believe he's so shortsighted as to fall for “Links reduce user time on platform.” Media orgs went through this circa 2009. Yes, the moment a user clicks on a link is often when her session ends. But those links are often the *entire reason for the session existing* [image] Logan Bartlett / @loganbartlett : @levie dumbest decision he's made from a user experience standpoint @saeeddicaprio : I love when he changes things like removing headlines and it backfires on him [image] Aaron Levie / @levie : This link title change makes Twitter far worse for its primary value prop of getting news quickly. Hope they undo it. https://www.axios.com/... James Felton / @jimmfelton : Woke up and Musk's latest change (removing headlines from links) has turned all our articles into surreal clickhole posts. Masterful gambit, sir. [image] Jonathan Swan / @jonathanvswan : I'm not sure I've ever seen a company owner destroy a product's basic functionality as quickly as Musk has done with Twitter. I find it borderline useless as a fast news service these days and my feed is full of tweets from people I don't follow. Kylie Robison / @kyliebytes : a source at X/Twitter told me that staff really hate this update source added that it also makes very little sense because leadership wants users to stay on the app but this getting people to leave unintentionally (clicking link thinking its an image) @popbase : Twitter/X has officially removed article headlines on links shared to the platform, now just displaying the image and website. [image] Elon Musk / @elonmusk : @teslaownersSV Traffic to legacy media websites keeps declining, while X rises Kylie Robison / @kyliebytes : i have horrible news: its being rolled out on desktop right now too @dailychef7 : @cwarzel @MattGertz Coming Soon: for an additional $11 per month, blue subscribers will be able to post custom headlines under any article they link. Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel : not that any of this matters really since this website is essentially dead for all the things i used it for @mikeisaac : @eacamp3 he wants more time spent on twitter and not linked to outside websites and the way he's trying to incentivize that is by breaking everything that makes you leave the app real galaxy brain stuff Nikhil Krishnan / @nikillinit : @MikeIsaac Thumbnail photos for articles gonna start looking like YouTube thumbnails lol Erin Woo / @erinkwoo : this seems to be happening now on mobile, one day after Elon Musk tweeted that links don't get as much attention. certainly one way to decrease attention to links is make it difficult/impossible to know what a link goes to... [image] Tom Warren / @tomwarren : all my links on here are gonna look like this now. Brb shooting loads of shocked faces [image] BuccoCapital Guy / @buccocapital : What a dumb, user-hostile update Transparent, too, as headlines still show up for ads Embarrassing and desperate attempt to drive revenue [image] Neeraj K Agrawal / @neerajka : they got rid of the headline appearing in twitter cards so now everything looks like the author is trying to make a meme [image] James Ball / @jamesrbuk : The algorithm now also seems to quite heavily punish external links, which vastly reduces Twitter's usefulness as a platform. I'm not even sure what Elon *wants* it to be any more. @hassankhan : Looks like links in ads still have a headline? lol what a dumb fucking website [image] Brianna Wu / @briannawu : This is so much better because now I have no idea what I'm reading before clicking on it. https://www.theverge.com/... Brian Stelter / @brianstelter : Users will now write tweets differently to incorporate headline + source info Katie Notopoulos / @katienotopoulos : There's something “lol” in the fact that this Pop Base tweet is how I've seen everyone share this news @rmac18 : I'm trying to read a news article on this site about the McRib coming back and the link is just one giant photo of a McRib Sar Haribhakti / @sarthakgh : Removing headline and text preview from links is the silliest design choice It accomplishes nothing other than make it super annoying for both posters & readers to find interesting stuff It accelerates the emerging behavior of just sharing screenshots to get more distribution Rakesh Agrawal / @rakeshlobster : More bad news for publishers. @mikeisaac : instead of “twitter is generally fun to play with as a free user, and as a paid user here's how it can be even more fun” it has been “here are the many ways we will degrade the experience unless you pay us” (extortionate seems to be the right word. i dont think it will work) @mikeisaac : the problem with Musk's approach to product development — at least as far as twitter is concerned, i do not follow his other work — is that it feels punitive in nature i.e. “how can i take things away in order to force people to pay for twitter” rather than rewards-focused @cubicleapril : @kyliebytes It's a reasonable design choice, but a terrible implementation. Overlay the headline on the imagine, have a link icon, done. Kylie Robison / @kyliebytes : re, what i scooped in august ( https://fortune.com/...) elon has internally said he wants to reduce the height of tweets, thus allowing more posts to fit within the portion of the timeline that appears on screen i have so many thoughts but also, this tweet from yesterday [image] Charles Arthur / @charlesarthur : You thought news sites were seeing the number of clickthroughs crater from this site? Just wait. Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : We're in an information war and information is losing — because the only people who know we're in one are trying to kill it. Whitney Merrill / @wbm312 : I'll just click on less things. This is so dumb. @mikeisaac : media people whose responsibility it is to worry about traffic have written off Twitter at this point now for other media people it's mostly about kicking the muscle-memory addiction that's formed over more than a decade of using it Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : An insane and user-hostile thing to do, so... of course. Jay Peters / @jaypeters : The headline for this article is: “Google Pixel 8 launch event: the 7 biggest announcements.” But thanks to a new change on iOS, I can't see that. https://www.theverge.com/... Alex Heath / @alexeheath : Elon has been pretty open about the algo heavily prioritizing time spent and deprioritizing links. This seems like the natural product evolution for that approach Megan Menchaca / @meganmmenchaca : It's impossible to capture the entirety of a story in a headline or story description, but they're a helpful tool for news outlets to give context for readers. Twitter appears to have removed them entirely on mobile, leaving only the text of the tweet to describe an article. [image] @xdaily : NEWS: X is officially removing article headlines on links shared to the platform. Now will just display the image and website. Update is rolling out on mobile now. [image] Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel : lol the last year of twitter is essentially just an experiment in taking a website that revolves around news/information and making it as hostile as possible to the people and organizations that do news gathering @mikeisaac : i love clicking on a stock Getty image and having no clue what the article is going to be about, great job LinkedIn: Robin Whitlock : So for example, on Twitter (I refuse to call it X), if you're having a discussion with a climate change denier and you try to back up your evidence with a link … Lou Paskalis : “Musk's latest move is to have headlines stripped from article links, leaving only an image and media source, which he seems to believe looks better and will keep users scrolling. … Kerry Tuttle : As someone who *used to* use Twitter as my go-to news curation tool, this is a disappointing update and one that I fear may encourage misleading posts … Forums: r/RealTesla : X stops showing headlines because Elon Musk thinks it will make posts look better r/Fuckthealtright : Twitter Is at Death's Door, One Year After Elon Musk's Takeover See also Mediagazer
The Twitter links neutering is something else. It used to be only headlines mattered for social. Then there was a clear movement over years towards the thumbnail image mattering more. But now it's the only thing that matters. Image pickers are the new headline writers? It's …
Wait you're telling me Elon musk disabled all headlines showing up on the entire website of Twitter and the same day he and Chaya Raichik attack me for the wording in my headline and falsely represent what I wrote in it? Damn that's crazy bro.
Guess I'll start sharing my stories here now since X cuts out headlines and only shares the story photo. . . Elon Musk really hates journalism with his whole heart.
Umm...I agree with this. Not for aesthetic reasons, but because it means a reduction in gaslighting on that platform. Headlines from msm are absolute garbage rage clickbait for the most part on Twitter. People will have to read and that may very well be the nail in the coffin …
Personally I'm quite pleased with the design of link cards in Mastodon 4.2, they finally feel on par with other types of media attachments. Links make the web go round!
That makes Twitter way less useful (if possible). Unless one types in text with the headline, or articles switch to header images with the headline just to accommodate this...
@elonmusk I scan tweets to see what news is most interesting to read. Removing headlines puts put too much onus on the OP to put the context in the tweet itself, and requires reading even more text for the consumer. Much better to let the market (including the publishers) decide …
@levie Really Aaron, really? You actually believe the media ... wow. Show me a screenshot of before and after and tell me which one is better. Actually.
This is the Facebook playbook: you lure in publishers by promising them a traffic funnel ("post excerpts and links and we'll show them to people, including people who never asked to see them"), and then the rug-pull: “Post everything here, don't link to your own site”
@elonmusk @levie He's right, it was better before. What drives me to Twitter initially each day is to see what's going on. The headlines tell me that, even if I don't follow the links.
@Jason ... Yes the original author or publisher will. But anyone sharing an article would never do that, it's too much work. So you can't just post a link to an article with a quick comment anymore. This radically reduces information dissemination.
Someone tell him this change impacts the blogosphere across Wordpress, Medium, Substack etc Ironically, I'm spending *less* time in my feed because I am spending more time clicking through to see what the article is about vs just scrolling past based on text in unfurled link [ima…
X user: i personally dislike this change to the platform and am basing my opinion on what i see with my own two eyes Elon Musk: wow, just believing the media smdh [image]
I can't believe he's so shortsighted as to fall for “Links reduce user time on platform.” Media orgs went through this circa 2009. Yes, the moment a user clicks on a link is often when her session ends. But those links are often the *entire reason for the session existing* [image…
Woke up and Musk's latest change (removing headlines from links) has turned all our articles into surreal clickhole posts. Masterful gambit, sir. [image]
I'm not sure I've ever seen a company owner destroy a product's basic functionality as quickly as Musk has done with Twitter. I find it borderline useless as a fast news service these days and my feed is full of tweets from people I don't follow.
a source at X/Twitter told me that staff really hate this update source added that it also makes very little sense because leadership wants users to stay on the app but this getting people to leave unintentionally (clicking link thinking its an image)
this seems to be happening now on mobile, one day after Elon Musk tweeted that links don't get as much attention. certainly one way to decrease attention to links is make it difficult/impossible to know what a link goes to... [image]
@eacamp3 he wants more time spent on twitter and not linked to outside websites and the way he's trying to incentivize that is by breaking everything that makes you leave the app real galaxy brain stuff
The algorithm now also seems to quite heavily punish external links, which vastly reduces Twitter's usefulness as a platform. I'm not even sure what Elon *wants* it to be any more.
Removing headline and text preview from links is the silliest design choice It accomplishes nothing other than make it super annoying for both posters & readers to find interesting stuff It accelerates the emerging behavior of just sharing screenshots to get more distribution
instead of “twitter is generally fun to play with as a free user, and as a paid user here's how it can be even more fun” it has been “here are the many ways we will degrade the experience unless you pay us” (extortionate seems to be the right word. i dont think it will work)
the problem with Musk's approach to product development — at least as far as twitter is concerned, i do not follow his other work — is that it feels punitive in nature i.e. “how can i take things away in order to force people to pay for twitter” rather than rewards-focused
re, what i scooped in august ( https://fortune.com/...) elon has internally said he wants to reduce the height of tweets, thus allowing more posts to fit within the portion of the timeline that appears on screen i have so many thoughts but also, this tweet from yesterday [image]
media people whose responsibility it is to worry about traffic have written off Twitter at this point now for other media people it's mostly about kicking the muscle-memory addiction that's formed over more than a decade of using it
The headline for this article is: “Google Pixel 8 launch event: the 7 biggest announcements.” But thanks to a new change on iOS, I can't see that. https://www.theverge.com/...
Elon has been pretty open about the algo heavily prioritizing time spent and deprioritizing links. This seems like the natural product evolution for that approach
It's impossible to capture the entirety of a story in a headline or story description, but they're a helpful tool for news outlets to give context for readers. Twitter appears to have removed them entirely on mobile, leaving only the text of the tweet to describe an article. [ima…
NEWS: X is officially removing article headlines on links shared to the platform. Now will just display the image and website. Update is rolling out on mobile now. [image]
lol the last year of twitter is essentially just an experiment in taking a website that revolves around news/information and making it as hostile as possible to the people and organizations that do news gathering