X confuses the masses by removing all details from links | Hacker News Reader

X confuses the masses by removing all details from links

theregister.com

90 pointsnickcw76 comments

This affects the Twitter social media card of type summary_large_image - a short-term fix if this affects your site is to switch that for the summary card, which still shows a visible link title with a smaller, square cropped image. https://twitter.com/matteason/status/1709986442124951931

I have a pattern for producing screenshots of my pages for use in social media cards which is suddenly a lot more relevant: https://til.simonwillison.net/shot-scraper/social-media-card...

> "Our algorithm tries to optimize time spent on X, so links don't get as much attention, because there is less time spent if people click away," the billionaire said.

... at that point he might as well say "maximize" instead of "optimize"

He’s wrecking the utility of X. Without that, engagement has less purpose and reward.

I don’t understand this move at all. “There is less time spent if people click away”

So now people are forced to click every link if they want to see what it’s about? Can’t stay on Twitter and get the headline and lead-in?

I would think these link previews let people stay on twitter but what do I know. I’ve stopped using it a long time ago. The mastodon app I use has link previews so this won’t affect me much.

Have they de-discovered a/b testing? Presumably it would have told them whether users stay or go because they have to click the link to find out what it is.

Musk's argument is that not showing any of the content other than the image will force people to instead put the article text content in the Twitter post itself, next to the image. By showing almost no context for a link, it will force posters to manually include more context, and thus people will stay on Twitter longer than when they were generating a bit of context for the embeds (e.g. article title).

> By showing almost no context for a link, it will force posters to manually include more context, and thus people

... will feel compelled to pay for Twitter, since to post significant text in a tweet you need to pay.

That's the real goal, to push people to paud accounts, not to make Twitter stickier.

> X, the platform formerly known as Twitter

I am so tired of reading this. Just call it Twitter. Nobody on earth thinks X is a good change other than Elon and his reply guys.

An added bonus is that it will make him mad, and it’s funny when he’s mad.

This will lead any content hosting just to burn the headline text in the social media image.

I'd be surprised if that happens in any meaningful scale. Twitter just doesn't justify that type of investment anymore.

Yeah, but for some reason journalists think X is still worth it, even though it goes against everything they stand for. X is not Twitter, yet journos can’t kick the habit.

Because nothing comes close.

Only because of the network effect. But once enough people I follow on Twitter switch to something else, I will happily follow.

Well unfortunately, this doesn't like it's happening anytime soon.

I certainly hope so -- because it's getting old to have to post the link AND copy the headline in manually. Though I got used to it posting RT links anyway, as they already weren't doing link previews for those.

Thank you for posting. It's great to see the flashes of sarcastic humor from El Reg of old. (Did they hire back somebody?)

Since when has Twitter, I mean [close window button] been not confusing?

What are the consequences for people using screen readers? Are the article details still accessible to those users or do they have go entirely by the tweet text?

It'll certainly make it far more important for people to use the ALT tag for descriptions.

People have already started protesting by making fake headlines for articles about Elon, so I have a feeling this "feature" won't last very long.

They managed to break things in screenreaders, so the alt text currently doesn't help: https://twitter.com/matteason/status/1709859263919624357

> improve their look

I thought this might have been linked to policies requiring social media platforms to pay for deriving content off newspapers, such as embed text, but alas improve their look it is.

I don't think the driving force of this change is either aesthetics or gov't policy. I think Musk is trying to maximizing Twitter's time on site and if you remove the headlines (and add 5 second delays on link redirects), it decreases the click-through rate on the links. Musk knows that if he outlaws all non-paid links, it would result in an uproar from media companies and users, so he is making the experience as bad as possible so people choose to stop linking out on their own.

Are there any platforms that show only the twitter:image and other twitter:* meta tags in HTML (ie: don't fall back on OpenGraph's og:*) ?

Looks like the perfect time to shave a few bytes off our pages and go OG-only. Ironically, X is perfectly fine with just og:images.

OG: has been the standard for years now as major platforms were supporting the main components of it so duplication for twitter wasn't needed.

If twitter really wants to "boost engagement" I'd suggest maybe not forcing people to log in or have JS enabled, but maybe that's just me. I haven't viewed anything on the platform itself since they made those changes.

> or have JS enabled

For 99% of users, they don't even know what Javascript is, let alone that you can disable it, let alone that they _should_ disable it on any site.

Not saying if that's a good thing or not, but I doubt allowing JS to be disabled would have any real effect on their engagement. In fact, I'm sure the frontend team at X would argue all the visual stuff enabled by JS increases engagement.

> or have JS enabled > but maybe that's just me

To be fair there are probably a least a couple dozen people who do this.

Ah yes, catering to Ludddites will surely boost engagement.

Even Mastodon is unusable without JS enabled, forget about Twitter caring.

I just want to follow my peeps. And maybe some hashtag "news" feeds.

A RSS reader like UI would suffice. Make it fancy if you have to.

I wouldn't even mind inline contextual ads. Or subscriptions. Or paid apps.

And, hot damn, dedupe the noise. All those @#$%^ retweets. Once is enough. FFS.

And I only to see the "pinned" post once. Not every single time I visit.

PS, FWIW, nitter hasn't musked up the links. https://nitter.net/drvolts

I think the “the masses” implies there are actually a lot of people still reading Twitter… perhaps it's just my bubble, but I feel not many actual humans are impacted by this change.

Use of that phrase tends to either signal that the author thinks that their little bubble is larger than it really is or that they have some sort of paternalistic need to inform this not-me-but-most-everyone-else group of people (or be concerned on their behalf). Or both.

Or it's self-aware mockery from a website that deliberately riffs on breathless and overblown British tabloid journalism.

I think Brits will have to get used to outsiders not understanding their culture as much as they did in the past.

Alternatively non-Brits may need to recognize that they aren't the primary target audience of British media and it's not a problem if they misunderstand something.

The Britishness of this piece flew under my radar on account of it being an article about Twitter/X.

For the past decade the most use of twitter, in my experience, has been the media reporting from/about it.

I've known 1 or 2 people in real life who use it

Control Panel for Twitter can already put them back [1] ^1 ^2

[1] https://github.com/insin/control-panel-for-twitter/releases/...

^1 while Twitter continues to put the headline in the aria-label on the link, given there's no accessibility team left to protect it

^2 unless you're using Firefox, as Firefox Add-ons now takes ~4 days to review new versions

I like how Musk claims it was done for aesthetic reasons. Yes, we can see from the site design that you care deeply about aesthetics...

Agreed.

Check out this animation posted by Elon Musk in the last few days https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1710561314278379959 where the X jerks slightly before it rotates, and then rotates off-center...

That ever-so-slightly off-center rotation bothers me to a supreme degree... but I guess it's fitting for the whole platform writ large.

Think of it as just another retweet(?) (re-X (?)) by Musk as he scans through his feed looking for things to boost - it's not a professional graphic, just a bit of fanboy material.

If you want to be really disturbed .. follow the source and see if you can spot any tell tale signs of just how rabid a fan that particular fan might be.

Less a Musk fan work, more a devoted offering from a Musk Acolyte willing to die at the altar of Elon.

re-Xeet. Pronounced SH-eet. Like, "I go on X and post Sheets. You can call me a sheet poster"

It all starts making more sense in that context. And if it's not, say it out loud a few times.

It does not improve the "look" since now everything looks like an image and I accidentally navigate to a bunch of lame websites.

It's a trick X-chan is using to boost link clickthroughs and brag to advertisers.

It's also a malware author's dream, but that's another discussion.

Will it become a twitter blue feature? I feel this might be one (weird) way to increase twitter blue subscriptions.

not sure it will work, but in an age where car heated seats and printer ink cartridges are behind subscriptions, why not this?

It's the age of nickel-and-diming, so I expect more of such weird antics to continue and spread to other websites.

"Who wouldn't want Elon Musk by their side, leading product?" - Linda

Thankfully no one will possibly consider just putting the titles inside the images in 48pt font with eye-bursting colors and no way to respond to user/device-specific configuration, right?

Add to the image someone making exaggerated faces, maybe?

No chance. They won't do this out of sheer respect for Elon's aesthetic preferences.

Adding Dodgecoin meme's to the UI - yep he is a genius.

A classic style-over-substance elon move

Saw something where this was being exploited for purposes of misinformation adding fake headlines to news links.

I don't understand what you are saying. Isn't it common on internet sites to allow the user to create the headline for the link? Is this what you mean? They just made their own title for it? Or is there some way to make it look like the official headline?

A tweet with a fake headline now looks exactly the same as a real headline. Previously the headline was pulled directly from the link so it was much harder to make a realistic fake

The official headline is no longer displayed - search for "Elon Musk wants to get rid of this headline" for examples of people linking to an article which reported on this in August.

Edit: screenshotted for people who don't want to/can't log in: https://imgur.com/gallery/cfFV9wQ

Twitter is just embarrassing now. I haven't used it in over a year now. Turns out it's absolutely unnecessary for a normal, well-informed lifestyle.

I deleted my account that I opened in 2007. I was a heavy user and used it to make friends and get jobs. I'm a little sad to see it thrown away like this, but not so much that I wanted to stick around to support it.

At least they are cash-flow positive now (excluding the $1.5 billion in debt payments based on $13 billion owed). [0]

[0] - https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/171033661546446454...

That's one heck of an exclusion.

Ever since the absurd logo/name change and blue checkmark idiocy, I assume every change is a further step towards purposefully sinking the platform.

This is the dumbest thing I've heard this week, and I've been following politics. Is this the new Twitter business model?

1. Shock

2. ???

3. Profit

Yeah, but without step 3.

I don't get it. I just don't. People use to claim that Musk bought Twitter just to burn it down, but even he doesn't have $43B to light on fire. (An open aside to readers: please don't reply about tax write-offs unless you actually understand how they work.) Does he genuinely, sincerely think things like this will work out well in the long run?

Musk bought Twitter not to burn it down. He was forced to buy it and doesn’t know what to do with it.

He commited to buying it then tried to back out with a bunch of false excuses (later admitted in BBC interview). The market had a big drop + the reality of the Apple advertising attribution changes kept hitting. Meta was able to recover from Apple's ad changes decently, turning Twitter into 8chan didn't help their recovery.

I actually don’t doubt Musk’s sincerity. He’s always been an opinionated user of the platform. I still think he’s under the impression he bought a technology company, not a media company, and has stopped listening to contrary opinions.

If he thought he was buying a technology company, why did he spend so much time insisting the tech stack was garbage and the engineering staff incompetent? Aside from those, what other reason is there to buy a tech company?

He never intended to buy the company, it was just a poorly executed excuse for a TSLA stock sale that got out of hand. There was never a reason to buy Twitter.

But once he had it, he’s been concentrating on the technical stack as if that was the biggest problem. Musk spent so much time there because he’s bad at this and focuses on the wrong things, because those are the things he’s good at. I think he is a really good engineering CEO but Twitter’s problems are 90% social.

I feel like people tie themselves in knots to avoid the obvious conclusion; that he’s in _way_ over his head, and the whole thing is driven by a dangerous combo of incompetence and overconfidence.

I’m not totally sure why this is, and it seems to mostly be just a Musk thing; when Yahoo periodically wakes from its slumber to make the Yahoo Finance UI inexplicably worse or whatever, say, no-one attributes that to any evil plot; it’s just Yahoo continuing to be rather bad at running Yahoo.

I suppose that some people still think of him as a magical supergenius, but even ignoring the Twitter product fuckups, that’s just really hard to sustain these days.

Too bad it’s dead I would have liked to know what’s happening in Israel right now and official Channels are always suspect.

This is an unpopular opinion, but I think Hacker News would be a worse experience with link previews.

One of the best things about this site, ui-wise, is that it feels "focused". The focus is not on the links posted but on the text surrounding them, if you want to give a preview for what your link is talking about, you just explain it.

It also encourages less lazy discussion, because the title and pictures don't jump through the link into the current context.

It might not be a bad thing for X in the same way it works well here.

What makes you think your opinion is unpopular?

Nobody wants to start off their comment with, "this is an utterly banal statement," not enough gravitas.

GSV The Banality of Gravitas

And yet, we are talking about X. Which currently shows a cover photo and nothing else about a link, so you have no idea what the link / article / page is about.

Many people share links with commentary and without clicking on an article you would have no idea other than a photo, about what the commentary is referring to.

But they've done the opposite, dropped the headline and just kept the picture. When you can only advertise your content through the picture, you get YouTube thumbnails, not HN.

While my exposure to Xitter is limited to Xits that others post and very occasionally reading an associated thread I think there's *some* merit here.

URLs can be bulky and making them short has it's merits. However, it also reduces the information--what they are seeing as "engagement" is often going to be people clicking it, seeing it's garbage and closing it. Thus I would favor a middle ground: Short visible URLs but the whole thing is displayed if you hover over it. I have no good answer for mobile.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com