Why is the journalistic standard to embed tweets (xeets?) instead of using screenshots?
An embedded tweet can be deleted, and depends on X supporting the functionality. If editing is ever introduced on the platform, it would permanently break all past articles that don’t have an independent record of the tweet (such as a full quote in the article or a screenshot). X can potentially (and maybe does) embed tracking features.
It seems like there are a lot of good reasons not to use embedded tweets, but almost every news source does it this way. Is there a good reason why?
It’s been common practice for well over decade now…
Embedded content lets you click on it to follow the tweet chain and see more info or even contribute to the conversation. A screenshot only shows exactly what the author decides to show you and nothing more.
Content disappearing or twitter walling itself off hasn’t been an issue until twatwaffle took over.
Sounds like we need a single click “archive.org + embed” solution.
It would also freeze the content as is
I mean to be fair you could just show the Screenshot and then link the image to the tweet (or whatever it is called now…). Best of both worlds (but more work)
Exactly. Also, screenshots can easily be doctored. An embedded tweet could not be, since you could easily click the link to see the original tweet.
So a screen shot linking to the original tweet, then?
Or they can do both. Post a screenshot and link the tweet below it so users have the option to click to the source. I don’t explicitly block twitter but it’s so bad that more often than not the embedded tweet doesn’t display when viewing the page with uBO.
‘doctoring’ can go both ways. Embedding gives more ‘doctoring power’ to original poster and X.