Elon Musk Decides ‘Who Needs Headlines, When We Can Just Have Pretty Pictures?’; Suspends Account That Made Fun Of Him
from the can’t-believe-he-really-did-it dept
In August we wrote about a rumored plan of Elon Musk to remove headlines from the TwitterCards (are they now X-cards? who the hell knows?), basically making the site completely useless for news consumption. At the time Musk claimed it was somehow more aesthetically pleasing. Because that’s what everyone looks for in their news links: are they aesthetically pleasing?
Anyway, it’s gone into effect every news link on Twitter looks like it’s just a photo, and years and years of built in habits of how to (1) tweet about the news and (2) read news on exTwitter… are flushed away. Basically, links to news stories now appear just as the image associated with the news story and the only way to tell that it’s actually a link is to happen to notice the tiny white text in the lower lefthand corner, which is ridiculously easy to miss.
And that’s made a mess for news orgs that were used to using the tweet text to comment on the headline. The headline that is now missing.
Or you get situations like this, where people are commenting on the headline… and we have no idea what the headline even is.
Some people have been rightly complaining about this, though Elon seems pretty angry that basically everyone says this sucks. Here he is arguing incoherently with Box founder Aaron Levie:
This is not about “believing the media,” this is about exTwitter basically making it impossible to tell that something is a link. For no clear reason.
Of course, others quickly realized that this meant you could link to whatever you want and… well… add your own headline. And, plenty of fun was had at Elon’s expense.
I guess maybe it is aesthetically pleasing after all…
Of course, Mr. “Free Speech Absolutist” who has baselessly called people who annoy him pedophiles on multiple occasions, couldn’t allow anyone to make a joke over his new “aesthetically pleasing” news link displays by referring to him as a pedophile, so when a nonsense peddler — whose sole claim to fame is baselessly implying tons of people are pedophiles — highlighted the Juniper tweet above, Elon responded… and suspended the account.
I guess comedy is no longer legal on the new, more aesthetically pleasing exTwitter?
Of course, in true Streisand Effect fashion, now more people are learning about all of this and reporters are asking questions.
So, just to sum up, we have a very silly change that Elon made that makes news links basically impossible to parse on exTwitter, which opened up a fun form of trolling, which many people used to make fun of Elon Musk himself. One of those troll tweets jokingly called Elon Musk a pedophile, which is one of Elon’s own favorite go to moves when challenged. Another account, whose entire claim to fame is baselessly suggesting random people are pedophiles, highlighted this to Musk, and Musk (who pretends to be a “free speech absolutist” to the absolute most gullible people in the world who believe him), then suspended that account for breaking “X’s” rules (by which Musk means “offended Elon Musk personally.”) That user’s backup account was also suspended, but this post is long enough that we’re just going to leave it there.
Anyhoo, please don’t post this article to exTwitter, because everyone will just think it’s an image anyway and not click on it.
Updated: Basically just as this post went live, Elon unsuspended the Juniper account, so really, we’re back to content moderation by whims.
Updated again: And… an hour later, the account was suspended again. Whims, whims, whims.
Filed Under: elon musk, headlines, images, journalism, news, twitter cards
Companies: twitter, x
Comments on “Elon Musk Decides ‘Who Needs Headlines, When We Can Just Have Pretty Pictures?’; Suspends Account That Made Fun Of Him”
Is this the first time on Techdirt, let alone any blog whatsover, that an Update has appeared before the post went live?
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“Just as the post went live” is ambigious about whether the update was posted before or after publishing the post.
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I’m an insider, and I saw the post have that “UPDATE” on the bottom before it went live to everybody else such that we could all see it and comment thereon.
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It has happened a few times before. In this case, it didn’t seem worth rewriting the whole thing, as it happened about 5 minutes before the post was scheduled to go live anyway.
And, of course, there’s another update as the account was then suspended again and hour after the post went live.
He really is trying to destroy Twitter now. I can’t think of any other explanation (save for him having suffered severe brain damage) that he would keep handing down edicts that substantially tank the usability and appeal of Twitter, then double down on the supposed genius of said edicts when told by others that he is ruining the service.
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It honestly strikes me as middle manager syndrome. “Things are going to work this way because I think it’s a good idea, regardless of how unworkable it is in reality.”
Couple that with the fact that he’s always had plenty of cushion from Dad’s emerald mines, and therefore been able to avoid meaningful consequences for his idiotic decisions.
You think intentional destruction is the answer because you’re looking for a rational explanation. Frankly, I would need to see evidence that Elon is a rational person in order to accept such a conclusion. Because he strikes me more like every irrational middle manager I’ve met, only with the addition of extreme wealth.
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Musk’s determination to destroy Twitter is irrational. The only logical explanations for his irrational behavior are “he is intentionally trying to destroy Twitter for reasons known only to him” or “he is an incredibly incompetent fuckwit whose major successes in life were due to sheer dumb luck”. Neither one of those speaks well of him.
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It’s actually not irrational. Twitter was one of the greatest tools for the plebs to organize for justice, including economic justice. Justice, especially the economic variety, would be bad for Elon’s goals of being a neo-feudal Lord.
There was every rational reason for Elon to tear down Twitter. I just don’t know if I believe he’s rational enough to have done it intentionally vs him actually believing he’s doing a good job.
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The means don’t really matter when the ends are the same regardless.
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The people who backed his purchase of Twitter are rationally counting on his trashing the place through his irrationality.
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Hmm. I don’t know. The usual suspects[1] rabidly claiming he (Musk) is a hyper “genious” (or something). So maybe it’s not about destroying twitter, but an “elegant” confession to the whole world about what kind of person he really is. I’m sure we are all supposed to be impressed.
[1] Trolls and fanatics probably don’t need naming.
Re: '... No, no the experts are wrong.'
I can’t think of any other explanation (save for him having suffered severe brain damage) that he would keep handing down edicts that substantially tank the usability and appeal of Twitter, then double down on the supposed genius of said edicts when told by others that he is ruining the service.
I can think of one and it could be summed up in one word: Ego.
He’s not nearly as smart as he thinks he is and as that applies to Twitter he refuses to accept that anyone knows more about how to run the company than he does, resulting in him firing or intimidating into silence anyone who disagreed with his decision in the company and petulantly lashing out against anyone he can’t fire who point out what an idiot he is.
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Sufficiently advanced narcissism is indistinguishable from gross stupidity.
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You have zero evidence that's why that account was suspended.
Seriously, you have no idea if that’s what occurred and you expended so many words ridiculing it as if it was proven fact that’s what happened.
Absolutely amazing.
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Given that Elon Musk has skin thinner than a sheet of notebook paper and less impulse control than a gambling addict, I can’t think of any other reason for the brief-ass suspension of that account beyond that tweet. If you have proof that Twitter suspended the account for any reason other than that tweet hurting Elon’s pwecious widdle feewings uwu, feel free to offer it up.
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Of course not, because Twitter isn’t talking as to why it was suspended, which leaves the press and public to speculate. And that speculation follows the most logical conclusion one can come to, with some circumstantial facts in evidence.
If you have a competing theory with equal circumstantial facts in evidence, please do tell!
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Matthew Bennett would have us believe that circumstancial evidence in this very article = “zero evidence”. What kind of education led him to believe that 1 = 0?
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Conservatism.
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These people don’t actually believe the things they say. They are deceivers, plain and simple.
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Wait, you mean…
Elon isn’t an immature manbaby with more money and ego than he has brains, skin AND sense?
Who will also allow CSAM if he likes the user?
/s
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Elon’s not going to fuck you. You can stop salivating over his dick.
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Sure…. So long as you ignore facts, history, context and behavior.
Mush is a child, a bully, and a weak skinned fascist.
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That’s a prerequisite for being a conservative.
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Never mind, guys. Turns out I’m actually really stupid.
Quietly expecting next Eli Lilly incident…
Elon and the Masters of the Dinkus Squad.
And yet people STILL refuse to get off the Xitter.
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Exactly.
It’s like a addiction.
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It should be: Twitter and its ilk are built on the same principles of addiction that govern gambling.
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They’re really not, and believing so is dumb.
But if you really, really believe this ridiculous idea (which has become a meme), pretty please explain which “principles of addiction” you’re referring to.
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Only insofar that it’s all intended to be as compelling as possible to hit the brain’s reward center. The mechanic for the compulsion is not the same for social media and gambling.
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Stephen, I expected better from you.
I know a lot of people who simply cannot afford to leave the site formerly known as Twitter.
It’s the network effect: everyone they know and want to know is on that unsafe place.
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I tend to think of it more as shameless egocentrism and exclusive self-interest killing any chance at personal integrity’s ever having a chance to survive. They’re all just too weak and afraid they’ll be left behind while all the popular kids run off to the next party without them. It’s actually quite pathetic.
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They would if Bluesky ever got out of beta, Threads had a single thing people wanted from a Twitter replacement, or people hadn’t convinced themselves that federation and instances made Mastodon “too complicated”.
In the image of Elon’s reply to Aaron Levie’s post, Elon wrote:
How does Elon expect Aaron Levie to get a “before” screenshot?
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Nevermind that, googling a screenshot is easy. It’s the gaslighting about “believing the media” that makes this particularly outrageous. As if Aaron Levie and everybody else can’t remember what it looked like yesterday or can’t form their own opinion. And that’s in the face of it already going wrong so badly, community notes couldn’t handle it because it’s not a truth establishing system, but a voting one. The fact that @JUNIPER got the notes to her satire defeated by the entertained mob probably added some salt to Musk’s ego wound.
― Jean-Paul Sartre
He specifically called out anti-Semites, but it frankly applies to fashes of all stripes.
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Regarding HotHead’s “How does Elon expect Aaron Levie to get a “before” screenshot?”
Ah the petulant tantrum throwing of a hypocrite that just can’t stand the taste of his own medicine or own up to what a colossal idiot he is, the only thing more pathetic being the people defending his actions.
I'll just repeat what I said
…back in August when this was floated:
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/22/today-in-heres-how-elon-is-making-extwitter-worse-hes-going-to-get-rid-of-headlines-snippets-for-news/#comment-3229282
Broken Tail Light
I’ve seen Muskovites countering that Juniper was abusing the Community Notes function (whether or not that was against the rules at the time is beyond me). I do recall one of the tweets encouraging users to do that as part of the joke, so it’s at least plausible, though I suspect it’s just a convenient cover for the real reason–kind of like how dirty cops will fabricate an after-the-fact excuse for their actions.
Headlines? The only news you need to care about can be found by following Elon and whatever he likes this minute.
We weren’t supposed to say that out loud?
Obvious solution from a news site’s side is to superimpose the headline over the bottom of the image.
Doesn’t help people who use screen readers, but it’ll help everyone else.
That said: what image does Xter steal to use on its posts from TechDirt? I can’t tell, as I don’t have an account there, so can’t search for TechDirt refs anymore.
I wonder if Musk is trying to get X to be irrelevant by the end of the year?
Hmm… https://twitter.com/techdirt/status/1567211319551483905 – looks like xter chooses their image by grabbing the bottom part of whatever the first image is in the article being referenced. There’s not even a proper alt tag for screen readers.
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Twitter is better than ever. This change has already made me a better Tweeter.
Alex Caraballo is a fat, degenerate biological male, btw.
Instead of Junlper being suspended, then unsuspected, then suspended again, maybe Ex-Twitter is bad at a user account change being kept in sync across all of its servers. So Junlper was briefly in a state of being both suspended and unsuspended at the same time, depending on when someone tried to see the account.
How long do you think it will take for news companies to simply start embedding the headline in the linked image?
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Or they could do the smart thing and just stop using the site rather than jumping through the hoops required to compensate for Elon’s latest idiotic design decision…
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Yeah. They existed before Twitter, they can exist after Twitter.
Surely no respectable news outlet wants to be associated with the kind of people Musk likes to associate with.
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Two problems with that, idea, the main one being this is happening with regular users linking to news pages outside SMFKAT,, News sites on SMFAKAT have practically always put their lede in the body anyway…
Secondly, this issue is by no means confined to SMFKAT, Google dropped the snippits from news sites in France, aftheir their link tax came i to effect, (unless the news site opted out of collecting the tax from google)
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what
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I would venture a guess:
Social Media Formaly Known As Twitter.
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It’s not a problem from a technical standpoint. Just a bit of server-side code to check the request for the image is from a Twitter/X server, then use ImageMagick to embed the article headline in the image. Then no matter who links to it the image will contain the headline.
But that doesn’t solve the issue with vision-impaired people using screen readers. And it’s also dancing to Musk’s tune, so why bother? There’s a good chance he’ll quietly change this back before long anyway. He’s as mercurial as a toddler hopped up on sugar and meth.
Wow … just fucking wow.
Everyone is missing the clear legal responsibility that Musk has to issue a DMCA take down to protect his trademark on calling someone a pedophile.
and yes, that is a sarcastic slam on DCMA takedowns, trademark memes, and Elon being
a pedohilethin skinnedI think that it is well past time for us all to quit pandering to this clown. It should be abundantly evident to anyone capable of critical thinking that he is not what he is portrayed to be. The only thing that we owe him is our DERISION.
We are all completely free to stop using his products. I have already taken this step, and it wasn’t difficult or painful. Of course, I have beaten addictions before, so it may have been a little easier for me.
The man is a cartoon villain come to life. He even has the name for it. Life is not a comic book. It’s time for us all to outgrow this juvenile nonsense…
I’d argue that Matt Gaetz has a more punchable face, but that’s just my personal opinion. But Musk’s is pretty punchable.