Elon Musk's X begins removing headlines and snippets from posted links

This change, which was initiated by website owner Elon Musk to "greatly improve the [platform's] esthetics," is already in effect.

When viewing posts on iOS, only the article's image and its URL overlay are displayed. On the web, users can still see the article snippet and a truncated version of its headline.

This format change has been met with mixed reactions, particularly from advertisers who reportedly didn't favor the new look. However, X continues to make changes driven by the desire to make posts more compact and thus fit more of them in the portion of the timeline that appears on screen.

Additionally, Elon Musk hopes that this change will reduce instances of clickbait headlines that rely on shock value to attract clicks.

Beyond aesthetics, Musk's motivation for these changes appears to be that he encourages the creation of more long-form content directly on the X platform. Under his leadership, the platform has increased the character limit for Blue subscribers to 25,000 characters, and he actively supports "more citizen journalism" and live video content on the platform.