Here’s something worth checking out if you’re particularly fond of using Tweet embeds on your other sites – Twitter, as part of a recent update, has altered the way that deleted Tweets appear when embedded on third-party sites. Removed content now looks like a page that couldn’t finish loading due to an extremely poor internet connection.

Wait, What Bed? 

Previously, deleted Tweet content looked something like this, with the text still visible, only without the rest of the Tweet formatting. It’s like a copy-paste from Windows notepad, but with the addition of basic text formatting such as bold fonts. Tech advisor Kevin Marks explained in detail how Twitter’s back-end code is now being edited to show ‘Blank’ Tweets to replace deleted comments. Mark explains:

“Until recently, if the tweet or account had been deleted, then Twitter would leave the blockquote alone, so the embedded text would still show, but without Twitter’s validation. [Now, deleted embeds don’t] show as a blockquote fallback, but as an empty white blob.”

So, what this says is that if you were still able to get at least the context behind a removed embedded Tweet before, now you get absolutely nothing, which can honestly lessen content significance under certain conditions. Left with absolutely nothing, readers might find it a tad difficult to follow along. It’s easy to see how the inability to glean any form of insight might be problematic. Twitter’s Eleanor Hardin explains this, noting that Twitter’s looking to ‘better respect when people have chosen to delete their Tweets’.

To further quote Eleanor:

“Very soon it’ll have better messaging that explains why the content is no longer available.”

It seems that Twitter’s not done updating the format yet, with other upgrades and tweaks possibly in the works to make the change a bit more palatable. Still, it could remain an issue for many blogs and sites across the web.

This wouldn’t be the first time Twitter fiddled with its embeds, causing headaches for web designers everywhere. Back in 2020, Twitter updated the look of Tweet embeds, re-aligning some pages. Last year, Twitter retired a couple of Timeline Embeds due to lack of usage.

The Wrap

Twitter, like any platform, needs to move with the times, making changes as it sees fit. On this note, there will always be a level of change required for such elements. Then again, an update like this could end up causing more problems than fixing them. The bottom line is that you might want to check your embeds to better safeguard from similar changes in the future. Learn to take screenshots, that way, you won’t leave viewers with a white blob.

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Sources 

https://bit.ly/3DRNCe3