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. <a href="https://twitter.com/matteason/status/1709986442124951931" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://twitter.com/matteason/status/1709986442124951931</a><p>I have a pattern for producing screenshots of my pages for use in social media cards which is suddenly a lot more relevant: <a href="https://til.simonwillison.net/shot-scraper/social-media-cards" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://til.simonwillison.net/shot-scraper/social-media-card...</a>
> <i>"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.</i><p>... at that point he might as well say "maximize" instead of "optimize"
> X, the platform formerly known as Twitter<p>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.<p>An added bonus is that it will make him mad, and it’s funny when he’s mad.
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?
> improve their look<p>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.
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:*) ?<p>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.
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.
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.
Control Panel for Twitter can already put them back [1] ^1 ^2<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/insin/control-panel-for-twitter/releases/tag/v3.20.0">https://github.com/insin/control-panel-for-twitter/releases/...</a><p>^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<p>^2 unless you're using Firefox, as Firefox Add-ons now takes ~4 days to review new versions
It does not improve the "look" since now everything looks like an image and I accidentally navigate to a bunch of lame websites.<p>It's a trick X-chan is using to boost link clickthroughs and brag to advertisers.<p>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.<p>not sure it will work, but in an age where car heated seats and printer ink cartridges are behind subscriptions, why not this?<p>It's the age of nickel-and-diming, so I expect more of such weird antics to continue and spread to other websites.
"Who <i>wouldn't</i> want Elon Musk by their side, leading product?" - Linda<p>Thankfully no one will possibly consider just putting the titles <i>inside</i> the images in 48pt font with eye-bursting colors and no way to respond to user/device-specific configuration, right?
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.
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?<p>1. Shock<p>2. ???<p>3. Profit
This is an unpopular opinion, but I think Hacker News would be a worse experience with link previews.<p>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.<p>It also encourages less lazy discussion, because the title and pictures don't jump through the link into the current context.<p>It might not be a bad thing for X in the same way it works well here.
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.<p>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.