Twitter (now called X) is a great platform for following the news, with many media groups sharing links to their websites on the social network on a daily basis. However, Elon Musk doesn’t seem to be happy about it, and has reportedly asked his employees to remove news headlines from the platform.
According to Fortune, Elon Musk believes that when sharing news articles, only the image and URL of the article should be displayed, not the headline. If a user wants to share a piece of text, they have to type it in themselves.
Elon Musk is doing this for a couple reasons. One, removing the headline frees up space on the timeline, allowing users to see more of the post. The second is that Elon Musk wants to force journalists to write directly on X. Elon Musk said on his personal X account that journalists who want “more freedom to write” and “higher incomes” should publish news directly on the platform.
Elon Musk also believes the change will help curb headline-grabbing, the source said.
Elon Musk has been using his power to reduce traffic to competing websites and social networks, with the platform using t.co link shorteners to limit traffic to outlets such as Instagram, Threads and The New York Times.
The rumor seems plausible, as a recent update to the X app added a tab that displays a website’s URL above the image of a shared post, a change Elon Musk intends to pursue despite advertisers’ objections to it.
If this change is actually implemented, it will have a huge impact on writers, journalists, and creators. Even though clicking on an image will still jump you to the website, the headline is what makes most people click on a news article. If implemented, these outlets will certainly lose a lot of views from Twitter.
Despite Elon Musk’s attempts to make Twitter seem attractive to journalists, there is no real benefit to publishing full articles on Twitter. First, there is a character limit if you are not a Blue subscriber (now called X Premium). Second, there’s almost no payoff for doing so. A few months ago, Elon Musk announced that creators would receive income from ad revenue based on the number of views of their posts. However, the platform has not been able to pay these creators, not to mention that the program is only available in the United States.
