this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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X drops headlines from articles, as new report details its bleeding ad revenue::Elon Musk's X revamped its look to eliminate headlines on article links Wednesday, the same day that Reuters reported the platform has seen massive monthly...

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[–] EyesEyesBaby 171 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ad revenue in August was down 60% year over year, the report said.

Good

[–] slaacaa 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Holy shit, that’s brutal. That company is dead

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I’ve seen estimates that put the loss of value of the company itself since Elon took over at something like 90%. If that’s anywhere even close to accurate… impressive. Most impressive.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Since Twitter is now private, we'll never know the real numbers, but the paper value of the Twitter brand itself being cast aside is a huge non-monetary loss.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Right?? Like, it was one of the most known brands in the world. You don’t throw that away if making money is your goal.

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[–] uis 6 points 1 year ago

They enshittified themselve to death

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[–] 1bluepixel 11 points 1 year ago

B-but Elon told me advertisers were returning!

[–] [email protected] 128 points 1 year ago (5 children)

How about we respond by dropping X from headlines and articles?

[–] SkybreakerEngineer 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think "dropping X" might have been a factor in this decision.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey, don’t do my homegirl Molly dirty like that—she just wants the world to feel good.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh, don't do that, I've still got half a bag of popcorn left.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Jesus, how big was that bag to start with?!

[–] FlyingSquid 8 points 1 year ago

Oh, just normal serving size...

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[–] uis 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's just wrong kind of X. We need to talk about X.org.

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[–] knacht1 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Did you mean "X", formerly Twitter?

[–] beefcat 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I believe they meant "Xitter".

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[–] [email protected] 106 points 1 year ago (7 children)

It’s called ‘Twitter’.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Xitter is also acceptable in my book.

[–] seaQueue 61 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The X is pronounced like "Sh"

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Just needs to be popped.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's "the service formally known as twitter" to be fair. They changed the name to something

[–] lando55 17 points 1 year ago

Ƭ̵̬̊witter

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Idk to call that shit show Twitter is kind of an insult to Twitter at this point

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah I know but at this point also; if it might piss off Musky then I’ll deadname it.

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[–] alienanimals 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Downvote Musk spam.

The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring him and his businesses stay in the headlines every day. Don’t be a useful idiot.

[–] Dadifer 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But it makes me so happy...

[–] ook_the_librarian 5 points 1 year ago

Not seeing it at makes me so much more happy.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As opposed to journalists, who drop articles from headlines.

[–] schema 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The change had been expected, with Musk tweeting in August: “This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the esthetics.”

Yeah... we figured it's his doing, since it's a terrible decision.

[–] Anonymousllama 5 points 1 year ago

Probably hoping that if they remove titles they can remove context from the link, trying to goad people into click-throughs. Pretty poor experience for the users I'd argue

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

What even is the point of this change?! What could it possibly improve?

[–] jay9 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Probably so people click the link more often to find out what it’s about - which Musk then can take to publishers and say “look how much traffic we generated for you”

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I see it. Horrible for the users though...

[–] CitizenKong 14 points 1 year ago

Elon Musk's mood for a few minutes.

[–] micka190 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Might just be a way to bypass some countries requiring that social media sites pay news companies when they scrape their articles and show a preview on the page? Something like that's been passed in Canada recently and companies like Facebook and Google basically just stopped showing summaries of news on their sites to Canadians as a result.

[–] qooqie 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Guys he doesn’t care, I have a feeling he’s more annoyed or even amused that people are still using Twitter more than anything. He’s doing the whole “I want to push this as far as possible xd” thing. And honestly it is kind of amazing seeing just how much people put up with to use that shit platform

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He bought it to destroy it. The Saudis helped fund his purchase, and they hated Twitter. They imprison and execute people for tweeting things they don't like and wanted him to break the platform

[–] dojan 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I believe this. Given that he states that he thinks Twitter corrupted his daughter, who now wants nothing to do with him, I can see him buying the platform to help his friendly Saudi regime and get to pick a personal bone as well.

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[–] ArghZombies 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

For people still using Twitter, if you view it in a browser like Brave it will hide all the ads for you. Even better, you can save the webpage view as a Web App in your phone and access it that way and you barely even notice it's the web version you're using and not the app. I've not seen an ad on Twitter in months since doing that.

[–] NocturnalEngineer 55 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Considering they dismantled every control they had to prevent disinformation, and it was already a cesspool to begin with... Why are people still using Twitter?

[–] ArghZombies 15 points 1 year ago

Sadly these still a lot of folks on there that haven't moved elsewhere. If you curate your follower lists and don't venture into the replies of big/ trending accounts then it's still manageable. Mostly I just use to to read people I follow rather than post anything new myself these days.

Also, I've feeds of decent journalists that I've built up over many years that don't post elsewhere. There's still that immediacy that you just don't get elsewhere.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Don't use Brave, they push crypto incentives. Use Firefox and ublock origin, that and BAT's chart is crap.

but Blink, you trade crypto

I guess I'd know, then.

edit: fuck plebbit too

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[–] uis 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] iforgotmyinstance 6 points 1 year ago

Xitter can you stop being a bitch for like, a minute?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Man, Elon just never stops, does he? He has made one good addition to what was a perfectly good Twitter (Community Notes), and at least what, 30 bad decisions? Has there ever been a CEO as stupid as Elon has been to Twitter over this year? I mean damn, even being outed as a child molester and forced to resign probably wouldn't have been as bad.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Community Notes predate Musk.

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