Elon Musk does huge U-turn; says will bring back news headlines from link previews on X

X owner Elon Musk has reversed his previous decision to hide headlines on the link previews of the articles shared on X. He revealed that an upcoming update will bring it back.

News headlines will again accompany URL cards on X, reveals X owner Elon Musk in a post on the platform. (AFP)

Elon Musk has announced that news articles shared on X (formerly Twitter) will once again feature headlines, instead of just the image in the URL card. This move has reversed his controversial decision from October 2023, when he removed headlines from news articles shared on the platform to reduce the height of the preview window and improve the aesthetics. At the time, many users complained that it would be difficult to contextualize the content of a URL with just the header image.

Musk made the announcement yesterday in a post on X where he said, “In an upcoming release, X will overlay title in the upper portion of the image of a URL card”. Interestingly, the reversal will not put the headline back to its original position but at the top of the link preview window, as per the post. It is unclear if the font size and placement of the headline will also be changed compared to earlier.

X to get news headlines back on link previews

In October, a report mentioned that the reason behind the decision to take headlines away could be an attempt to boost engagement on the platform. Earlier, Musk said in a post, “Our algorithm tries to optimize time spent on X, so links don't get as much attention, because there is less time spent if people click away. Best thing is to post content in long form on this platform”. Musk also mentioned in a later post that this decision would “greatly improve the esthetics”.

The update to remove the headlines showed up first in iOS, and then in Android and the website. It is expected that the rollout of the reversal will also take place the same way. However, a timeline for this update has not been revealed as of yet.

X has been getting regular updates for a number of things ever since Musk took over the company. Recently, the platform added a new way for its premium users to gain a higher reach on the platform. The new method involves adding a post to the Highlights tab. This will automatically tell the platform's algorithm to prioritize the post and push it to more people. Musk said this feature was being introduced to promote replies, and abusing it may result in nullifying the effect.