Twitter is now reportedly reverting at least some changes made in a recent update that left blank placeholders instead of the embedded tweet for any deleted or removed tweet that had been placed on web pages.
For clarity, an embedded tweet is one that’s shared on a site like Android Headlines in its original format. Such as in this article. The embedded code comes complete with a link on tap and any images that were included.
A recent change to how Twitter worked broke embedded tweets. Instead of displaying the Twitter UI on the page, the tweet itself would appear blank. Specifically, that happened if a tweet was deleted. If the tweet or its original poster was otherwise removed by Twitter for violating policies, the embedded tweets would show as blank as well.
How is Twitter planning on working around its embedded tweet issue?
Twitter will, for the time being as the change is reverted, effectively take things back to where they were. Namely, even if a tweet is deleted or removed, it will still show up as placed as an embedded tweet. That means that sites that share a now-deleted tweet won’t show a blank gap instead. They’ll show the original tweet.
The fix is not necessarily the one Twitter is looking for as a permanent solution, however. The purpose of the change was to ensure that misinformation wasn’t inadvertently spread via embedding. But that caused a number of problems of its own. Not least of all, with tweets that were embedded in news stories. Particularly since tweets are often shared in such articles for context or as a source of the information being shared.
It isn’t immediately clear how, exactly, Twitter plans to address the opposing issue, as of this writing. Company spokesperson Remi Duhé has reached out to the source to clarify that Twitter will continue exploring other options. But no clear indication of what that might look like has been provided for now.
2022-04-12 15:07:02