Twitter Backtracks on Masking Deleted Embedded Tweets

Twitter has backtracked on its decision to change the appearance of deleted tweets that have been embedded on websites. Until recently, these deleted tweets appeared as blank boxes that looked really confusing for users browsing the web, but Twitter has now brought back the previous system that showed the text of deleted tweets inside a blockquote.

The company previously justified its decision to make deleted embedded tweets unreadable as a way to “better respect when people have chosen to delete their Tweets.” This clearly wasn’t ideal, especially since Twitter didn’t properly communicate about the change and broke how these deleted tweets looked on the web without any notice.

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“After considering the feedback we heard, we’re rolling back this change for now while we explore different options,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Verge. “We appreciate those who shared their points of view — your feedback helps us make Twitter better.”

This is how deleted tweets looked on the web until recently.

A lot of changes seem to be happening within Twitter these days: The company has confirmed that it’s working on an Edit feature, which has been a top-requested feature for many years. Moreover, the company is reportedly planning to make TweetDeck, its web-based dashboard for power users a paid Twitter Blue feature.

The fact that Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently became the biggest Twitter shareholder also seems to have taken the company by surprise. After offering Musk a seat on the company’s board of directors last week, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has since revealed that Musk ultimately declined the proposition. “Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input. There will be distractions ahead, but our goals and priorities remain unchanged,” the exec said.

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Conversation 3 comments

  • timwakeling

    12 April, 2022 - 6:32 am

    <p>Those tweets don’t look as if they’ve been deleted; they look as if they’ve failed to load. Which I imagine is the problem here. Hiding them with a message that they’ve been deleted would be better.</p>

  • Donte

    12 April, 2022 - 7:34 am

    <p>Twitter is the worst thing ever to happen to the Internet.</p>

  • jamJAR

    16 April, 2022 - 6:07 am

    <p>If you want to delete a tweet, I’m sure you want it gone from everywhere. It’s like all social media, not really designed for the people who use it, actually designed for the companies who mine it.</p>

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