X says it’s bringing back headlines to posts with external links

After changing the way X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, displays embedded link previews in posts, owner Elon Musk is backtracking on that decision — at least a bit.

News of the change was announced by Musk himself, posting that “In an upcoming release, X will overlay title in upper portion of the image of a URL card.” It’s not clear when the changes will roll out.

Musk reportedly wasn’t a fan of the old way X used “cards” to highlight and preview off-platform content and also wanted to encourage users to keep original content on X as opposed to linking out to other sites which cards, by their very nature, do.

The previous change, which rolled out in early October 2023, switched to showing an image with the link’s domain name in the lower left corner. 

Users noted, however, that it wasn’t very clear that the image was clickable and that removing the headline preview would often remove important context around the post.

The change was also awkward because it applied to past posts as well — meaning the context could disappear when before it made sense.

Musk himself found himself being called out by users for posting the words “Extremely concerning!” while posting a link to an article about the C-suite trouble at OpenAI. Many users pointed out that the post didn’t make much sense without the headline of the story along with it, though users could still click through to find out the content of the story.

It’s important to note that X does not appear to be planning to bring back the same Twitter card formats as before the October 2023 changes. 

Advertisement

Musk later clarified that the format will involve placing the headline over the top portion of the image. This could be done in a similar way as to how the domain name is shown.

It’s not clear if the domain name tag will stay or, if it does, the headline text will be larger, a different color or have another characteristic that would make it clearer that it’s something else.

It’s also not clear how X might truncate longer headlines, which could affect how sites write title tags and story headlines. Overlaying the headline text over the image, instead of above or below it, also had the disadvantage of potentially covering up part of the image and, potentially, create awkward framing or even some unintended looks.

It also remains to be seen if this change will also be applied retroactively or, perhaps, only to posts going forward. 

Finally, it’s also not clear how X will treat posts with external links in terms of ranking. Many social sites, including Facebook, have been, de-emphasizing posts with outbound link in order to keep users on their platform and, ultimately, seeing their ads.

X is reportedly performing similar actions and it’s not clear how the formatting change will affect algorithms, if at all, though it seems like that it would downplay posts with external links.

The new solution also appears to be at least have the potential to improve accessibility, though that could largely depend on how the title text is coded in the release.

It’s also worth noting that, at least to some degree as users adapt to the latest change, a standalone image with headline overlay still might not look like a clickable element, so some of the tips NewscastStudio published as workarounds for the no-headline change might still be useful.

As demonstrated by the October and forthcoming changes, Twitter also still maintains tight control over how it’s platform looks and functions. That’s not unusual, of course, but many changes rolled out during the Musk era have been notably poorly executed and, in some cases, provided challenging to those with disabilities. 

X no longer has a communications media relations team. Attempts to email its press relations address received an automatic reply reading “Busy now, please check back later.”