Twitter (and YT) embed tag

[danbrotherston]

I noticed a while back that the Twitter and YT embed tag ([twitter]) is not working. When I use the tag in a tweet, I just get an empty post. The content is still there, I ca go to edit mode and remove the tag, but until I do it renders as an empty post.

Am I using it wrong? Or is it not working? It would be nice if it was working, I think it's a QoL improvement if we don't have to follow links to see the context.

I seem to recall this coming up in discussion before, so maybe I'm forgetting why it was disabled (although if disabled for a reason, it should probably have a better result than simply not rendering a post).

[dtkvictim]

I noticed a while back that the Twitter and YT embed tag ([twitter]) is not working. When I use the tag in a tweet, I just get an empty post. The content is still there, I ca go to edit mode and remove the tag, but until I do it renders as an empty post.

Am I using it wrong? Or is it not working? It would be nice if it was working, I think it's a QoL improvement if we don't have to follow links to see the context.

I seem to recall this coming up in discussion before, so maybe I'm forgetting why it was disabled (although if disabled for a reason, it should probably have a better result than simply not rendering a post).

I never saw the original discussion, maybe it was related to this, but as a user I would prefer if no requests to third parties were made without opting in. But I know I'm probably in the extreme minority, and this is just an inconvenience to most people, so I accept that it's up to me to modify my browser in a manner that I'm comfortable with. It's nice when site owners take steps towards user privacy though.

FWIW, it seems like every page makes requests to Twitter servers to load a script, regardless of embedded content. As well as Amazon Ads, among other third party content.

[danbrotherston]

I noticed a while back that the Twitter and YT embed tag ([twitter]) is not working. When I use the tag in a tweet, I just get an empty post. The content is still there, I ca go to edit mode and remove the tag, but until I do it renders as an empty post.

Am I using it wrong? Or is it not working? It would be nice if it was working, I think it's a QoL improvement if we don't have to follow links to see the context.

I seem to recall this coming up in discussion before, so maybe I'm forgetting why it was disabled (although if disabled for a reason, it should probably have a better result than simply not rendering a post).

I never saw the original discussion, maybe it was related to this, but as a user I would prefer if no requests to third parties were made without opting in. But I know I'm probably in the extreme minority, and this is just an inconvenience to most people, so I accept that it's up to me to modify my browser in a manner that I'm comfortable with. It's nice when site owners take steps towards user privacy though.

FWIW, it seems like every page makes requests to Twitter servers to load a script, regardless of embedded content. As well as Amazon Ads, among other third party content.

I mean, I understand the principle (and I personally run a pihole to block a lot of trackers), but I also enjoy the integration that is possible with such embedding.

FWIW, from a technical standpoint, is it not necessary that such embedding occur at the browser level, the backend service could perform the embedding. But there are benefits and drawbacks to doing it this way.

[Spokes]

Hmm I'll take a look. Did we ever have YouTube embedded?

[Joedelay Highhoe]

As someone who may or may not browse WRC from a network that has blocked twitter and other forms of social media, I would prefer screenshots rather than an embedded link.

[danbrotherston]

As someone who may or may not browse WRC from a network that has blocked twitter and other forms of social media, I would prefer screenshots rather than an embedded link.

Screenshots could be automated on the backend potentially (although if the content is served from WRC it doesn't matter if it's an image or text), but I'm not going to be taking screenshots of tweets to post, sorry. Leaving aside the time it takes to do it, it makes for a worse user experience for most people, the image won't be adaptive to mobile, it won't provide the original context, nor does it provide an accessible experience for the visually impaired.

Cutting and pasting the content of the tweet is possible, but I don't have a lot of confidence in the BB system to render it particularly well.

To me the question was providing a link alone, or using the system embedding tools to show an inline rendering of the tweet.

[tomh009]

Cutting and pasting the content of the tweet is possible, but I don't have a lot of confidence in the BB system to render it particularly well.

That is what we do for pretty much all other linked content, though, whether it's a news article or a random web site. Twitter often gets special treatment because (1) it's used a lot and (2) it's standardized. But many forum software implementations have issues with embedded Twitter links, ours is not the only one.

[ijmorlan]

I know everybody expects everything to look like the original, but what’s wrong with the centuries-old (millennia?) practice of including a quotation with a cite? For twitter, that would mean giving the content of the tweet in quotation marks or as a block quotation, with the URL of the tweet as the citation. The only thing modern about it is the use of a URL for the citation and the formatting of the URL as a clickable link.

As someone pointed out, a screenshot is definitely not accessible.

[ac3r]

That's why most times I just provide direct links to things. Embedding is great, but often breaks indeed. Or only partially works - YouTube being an example where you see the video but only half of it shows up. Screenshotting is annoying too as it takes extra steps to do, you then need hosting and sometimes the screenshot just sucks (mobile ones in particular). Much easier to just link to something and/or using quotes to highlight specific things unless I'm wanting to use an image as the img tags are easy enough.

Forums are super old so the software out there just sucks at times even though it does the job. It feels increasingly archaic though (then again I still use IRC haha). But there haven't been any new open-source forum software projects so you're limited.

[Spokes]

Ya I wouldn't expect a screenshot. But if you want to all the power to you.

That's good to know other sites are having issues with the Twitter embed not just us. It used to work flawlessly. Not sure what's up now