Elon Musk is making yet another controversial change to X, formerly Twitter.
The 52-year-old richest man in the world made a design change to the platform that stopped displaying headlines on posts linking out to articles as of Thursday (October 5).
The change began first rolling out on Twitter’s mobile apps on Wednesday (October 4), and started appearing on the website after midnight.
Links to news stories on X were previously displayed as “cards,” featuring article’s lead image, a headline, and a brief summary.
Now, links only display a lead image which is clickable, and a small watermark at the bottom left showing the name of the website.
Keep reading to find out more…
The change immediately drew criticism from users, complaining that it’s no longer easy to tell what’s a link to a website, nor what the article is about.
Back in August, Elon confirmed that the redesign was coming from him directly and said it “will greatly improve the esthetics.” Fortune reported Elon believes hiding the headlines will “help curb clickbait” and “reduce the height of tweets.”
At the same time, his ex Grimes is now suing him.
Here’s how that looks now…
Twitter/X has officially removed article headlines on links shared to the platform, now just displaying the image and website. pic.twitter.com/fNQSfAy70d
— Pop Base (@PopBase) October 4, 2023