Twitter (now X) has become a great platform for following news, and many media groups (including ours) share links to their websites on the social network every day. However, it seems that Elon Musk is not happy about this, as he has reportedly asked his employees to get rid of the news headlines on the platform.
Musk wants Twitter to hide headlines from news articles
As reported by Fortune, Musk wants to remove the headlines that appear when a user shares a news article on Twitter/X. As a result, posts will only show the image and URL of that article. Users who want to share a piece of text will have to type it themselves. And there are two reasons why Musk seems to be interested in this change.
Firstly, removing the headlines would free up space in the timeline to show users more posts. At the same time, Musk wants to force journalists to write their articles directly on X. On his personal account, the billionaire said that journalists who want “more freedom to write” and “higher income” should publish directly on the platform.
This doesn’t come as a surprise since Musk has been using his power to reduce traffic from competing websites and social networks that he doesn’t like. More specifically, the platform has been using its t.co link shortener to throttle traffic to Instagram, Threads, and publications like the New York Times.
The rumors seem plausible, since a recent update to the X app added a label that shows the URL of websites above the images of shared articles. Although advertisers have taken a stand against this change, Musk plans to go ahead with it anyway.
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Of course, if this change is indeed implemented, it will have a huge impact on writers, journalists, and creators. Even if clicking on the image still takes the user to the website, the headline is what convinces most people to click on a news article. Without it, these publications will certainly miss out on a considerable number of views from people coming from Twitter.
And while Musk tries to make Twitter seem like an appealing place for journalists, there’s no real advantage to publishing a full article on it. First, because there’s a short character limit if you’re not a Blue subscriber (which is now called X Premium). And secondly, there’s barely any remuneration for this.
A few months ago, Musk announced that creators would receive money from advertising revenue based on the number of views they get on their posts. However, the platform has been failing to pay these creators, not to mention that this program is only available in the US.
At this point, Musk is far from caring about creators. Instead, the only thing he’s been doing since acquiring Twitter is using what’s left of it to make himself look cool among his fan base, while slowly killing the platform for everyone else.
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