Elon Musk's X Set to Transform News Links Presentation on Platform

In a strategic move aimed at reshaping user engagement on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk is spearheading an initiative that could potentially reshape the dynamics of news consumption. Musk revealed on Monday his intention to revamp the way news article links are displayed on the platform, a decision that might have far-reaching implications for news publishers' audience outreach.

The crux of the plan involves a streamlined approach, with X intending to strip news links of their conventional headline and accompanying text, retaining solely the primary image associated with the article. While the move might seem audacious, it aligns with Musk's broader vision of encouraging users to spend more quality time on X and enticing them to embrace the subscription-based model, which offers comprehensive details.

The immediate consequences of this transformation remain cloaked in uncertainty, particularly concerning its impact on advertisers who have been drawn to the platform. Musk had previously touted X's substantial user base, claiming around 540 million monthly active users as of July. The current presentation of news links on user timelines, resembling "cards" featuring images, source references, and truncated headlines, has proven effective in driving click-through rates, thereby bolstering readership for news publishers.

However, with the envisaged truncation of link details, users may find themselves compensating by adding more personalized text to their posts. This subtle shift could ultimately steer users toward considering X's premium subscription service, offering an expansive 25,000-character limit for single posts. In conjunction with these alterations, Musk is repositioning X as an appealing hub for content creators, accentuating its value proposition.

Distinct privileges await premium subscribers, including the ability to share longer videos, heightened visibility for their posts, and a share of ad revenue—a trifecta that positions X as a nurturing ground for burgeoning content creators.

As Musk orchestrates these changes, the platform's evolution continues to mirror his innovative approach, challenging established norms while beckoning users and content creators into a new era of social media engagement.

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X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, is in the early stages of changing how it displays links to external websites. The goal is to remove all headings and subheadings (brief descriptions that appear below the heading) from tweets.

The change, first reported by Fortune and later confirmed by Musk himself at X, is apparently designed to make "aesthetic improvements." Fortune reports that Musk wants to reduce the height of individual tweets so that more content can be displayed in a user's feed at any given time. The change is designed to address what Musk sees as a problem with news publishers using clickbait headlines to lure users to their websites to read their stories.

We can already see the first steps towards this new design for X, as shown in the link card above the top-level domain (for example, fastcompany.com or youtube.com) image. And experts warn that it could have a detrimental effect on media literacy—and start a wave of cybercrime.

"What it does is take away a way to drive traffic to news sites," said Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at the UK University of Surrey, who said it could be the first step toward censorship of sites that Musk finds objectionable. —Remember that the platform once flagged links to rival sites like Substack as unsafe without proof.

Equally malicious to Woodward is the possibility that the deletion of relevant information about a link may cause X to ordinary users. "I think some may misuse it to spread misinformation," he says. It's not unlikely, in a world where people keep rerolling on X, that any important contextual information is removed, leading to a misrepresentation of links. It is possible that Internet trolls or cybercriminals may try to pass off a large image of an innocent or beneficial subject as an image featuring a link that is actually malicious.

"By relying solely on images, there will be no context for the images and it will be very easy for people to be misled into thinking what an article might be about," says Steven Buckley, a lecturer in media and communication, specialist in US politics at the University of London. and social media. "When less context is provided, the impact of fake news can increase."

Beyond the practical risks described above, Buckley also cautions that the proposed changes will even force news organizations to really rethink their editorial strategies. "Even if news organizations bow to Musk's new thinking and rely solely on images to get people to click on their news links, news organizations will just start producing bombastic, clickbait-y images," he says. "We've all seen thumbnails on YouTube that look like a jumbled mess that still make you click on them to see what the video is about. These jumbled images could soon flood X's timeline if Musk gets his way."