X stops showing headlines because Elon Musk thinks it will make posts look better

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Twitter’s “X” logo on a purple and blue background

X, formerly Twitter, is no longer showing headlines on articles shared on the platform. Instead, X is only showing the article’s lead image and the domain it will link you to. The change is present on the iOS app for myself and another Verge staffer.

You can see the differences between the X iOS app and X on the web in this image slider:

I also made a post on X to demonstrate what’s going on.

A screenshot of a post on X.

A screenshot of a post on X.

This change, while very annoying, doesn’t come as a total surprise. Fortune reported in August that this change was in the works, and X owner Elon Musk confirmed that the switchover was “coming from me directly” and would “greatly improve the esthetics [sic].” That leads me to believe that the headlines will be disappearing from the web and Android eventually.

Musk has recently been encouraging users to post more content to X directly in an effort to help boost engagement on the platform (and perhaps also because he “almost never” reads “legacy news anymore”). He’s also said that the platform’s algorithm “tries to optimize time spent on X,” meaning that “links don’t get as much attention” and that the “best thing is to post content in long form on this platform.”

In my opinion, removing headlines makes X harder to use — posts are less easy to parse at a glance — so I’m not sure if this change is going to lead to people posting more often like Musk hopes.

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