Elon Musk is attempting to alter how news links display on his social media network X, formerly known as Twitter, which may make it harder for news producers to pull readers.
X plans to remove headlines from links: According to Musk’s post published late on Monday, X intends to eliminate the headline and text from links to news stories shared on the site, leaving only the lead image.
The move is probably an effort by Musk to encourage users to stay on X for longer and persuade them to choose the subscription service for additional information.
It is not yet apparent how the change would affect the platform’s advertisers; Musk mentioned in July that the platform had 540 million monthly users.
Users’ timelines currently display news links as “cards” containing a picture, the source address, and a condensed headline. Such packaging promotes clicks and increases readership for publishers.
However, because of the reduced links, users might find themselves adding some text to their posts. If this happens, they might then think about using X’s premium service, which allows for posts with up to 25,000 characters.
Musk is promoting X as a more useful platform for content creators as a result of the modifications. Longer films can now be posted by premium subscribers, who also get a share of ad sales and have their posts shown higher up.