X, formerly Twitter, is planning to hide headlines from news stories on its feeds.
Elon Musk on Monday confirmed a report in Fortune that the platform will strip out the headline from story links so that the links are only from the article’s lead image.
“This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the esthetics,” Musk wrote on X, Monday.
This move could potentially undermine the ability of news publishers to draw an audience.
Musk wants the social media platform users to publish their articles directly on X.
“If you’re a journalist who wants more freedom to write and a higher income, then publish directly on this platform!” he said.
The primary reasons behind this removal of headlines appear to be intentions to reduce traffic from competing websites and social networks as well as free up space in the timeline to show users more posts.
Since his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October, Musk has been on a mission to revamp every aspect of the company, from technical features to consumer policies.
Twitter’s high-profile users such as journalists, politicians and athletes, previously lost their blue tick identity verification mark. The mark is to only be recovered by paying for a premium subscription.
This change has become harder for most users and consumers to discern real people and companies from phony accounts. It has created room for imposters and misinformation.
In July, Musk said Twitter will limit how many tweets users can read. Verified users were limited to reading 10,000 tweets per day while unverified users can only access 1,000 tweets, and 500 posts per day for new unverified users.
The limits have especially impacted accounts run by informational agencies, journalists and monitoring services as they rely on reviewing thousands of tweets every day.
They have been limited in the number of tweets they can make and on how much they can read.
Musk’s update to hide news headlines is predicted to have a huge impact on writers, journalists, and creators.
Even though clicking on the image still takes the user to the website, the headline is what convinces most people to click on a news article.
Most publications will certainly miss out on a considerable number of views from people coming from Twitter.
Additionally, direct-publishing of articles on X will have no real advantage for those who are not Blue subscribers, because there is a short character limit for them, and also, news organizations or writers are not going to receive any payment for it.