- Elon Musk has introduced yet another controversial change to X.
- The billionaire has scrapped article headlines for links posted on the platform.
- He first floated the change in August, saying it would “greatly improve the esthetics.”
Elon Musk has banished article headlines on X in an attempt to improve the way the platform looks.
Articles posted on X appear as an image, with the outlet shown in the bottom-left corner. The change has already been rolled out for mobile.
Musk first floated the change back in August. He said the decision to scrap link headlines had come directly from him and would “greatly improve the esthetics.”
Some X users aren’t so sure.
“Incredibly annoying,” Joseph Politano, an economics writer, said of the change. “Just an unfathomably stupid change and another way this site is getting more hostile to journalists.”
Another X user questioned the value of displaying article links without necessary context. “So we’ll just see random images without any context,” they said.
Others chimed in to say the change made articles look like memes.
The shakeup is the latest in a long list of strange changes Musk has made to the platform.
Among the more bizarre ones was a temporary limit on the number of posts a user could view each day. This sparked a furious backlash.
Equally strange was the suggestion of a paywall for the entire site in an attempt to combat bots on the platform.
Musk told Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that having a payment system and prioritizing premium users’ posts would help minimize the influence of bots.
Musk didn’t give specifics but said X would charge “just a small amount of money.”
His other changes to X included overhauling Twitter’s verification system and introducing a new subscription service.
Representatives for X did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment, made outside normal working hours.
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