Elon Musk-owned X has decided to do away with the headline or text which appears on the lead image of articles on the platform.
The move is made to incentivise media to publish articles on the microblogging platform X, cut down on the click baits and promote the usage of the long post feature.
In the coming times, the link posts will only display an overlay of the site URL along with the header image so as to help reduce the vertical pixel space that such articles take as well as cut down on click baits.
Example via @yashar of what the new design could look like.
Left: Current
Right: New design (projected) pic.twitter.com/tnA69PP2Mj— X News Daily (@xDaily) August 22, 2023
This also could be one of X’s ways to incentivise media to publish articles directly on the platform and for using a long post feature to provide more context to the link as it will display an overlay of the Site URL along with the header image.
Musk also confirmed that this change which is intended to “aesthetically” improve how the X timeline looks was his decision.
Earlier today, he also shared the viewpoint, “If you’re a journalist who wants more freedom to write and a higher income, then publish directly on this platform.”
This comes at a time when X has already begun sharing ad revenue with selected verified creators for the ads served in the reply section of their posts.