In his latest attempt to oppress journalism on X/Twitter, Fortune reported that Elon Musk has decided to remove headlines and text snippets from news articles when shared via links on the platform. Articles will now only appear with their lead images. Musk confirmed the update to Fortune and said he’s bidding ado with news headlines and subtext “to help reduce the vertical pixel space that articles take,” cut down on clickbait, and improve the social network’s overall aesthetic. This is such a low blow in Musk‘s war on news outlets and gives them the extra work of having to type headlines and subheads out now.
Elsewhere in X’s ecosystem, a temporary glitch on the platform broke all links and images posted before December 2014. X is still working to fix the bug and claims no images or data were lost in the process, but we won’t know that for sure until after the weekend concludes. The platform is also still experiencing backlash after Musk tweeted that X/Twitter is removing the block feature in favor of a mute function only for feeds, though the block button will still be functional for DMs. There is an interesting note under Musk’s tweet now that says X would be in violation of app store policies if the feature is removed, which could result in the app being taken down. Let’s keep an eye on that.