According to the latest report, Twitter has now made a small but important change to the way deleted tweets are displayed when embedded on third-party websites. Since at least the end of March, social media networks have started showing a blank box on external websites when embedded tweets have been removed.
Previously, when Twitter processed tweets that were deleted but still embedded, the original unformatted text was preserved. With recent changes, those words are now gone, leaving a gap in any embedded tweet stories.
According to Twitter senior product manager Eleanor Harding, the change was made to “better respect the circumstances in which people choose to delete their tweets.” But this also affects any tweets that are deleted for other reasons, such as the deactivation of the account that tweeted them.
Twitter is blanking these tweets using its embedded Javascript. To see the original text, you can disable Javascript in your browser. Still, it’s odd that Twitter made such a big change without some kind of warning. Twitter appears to have rolled out the change before updating its support documents, but those documents still describe the behavior of previously deleted tweets.
Previously, even if the tweet was deleted, it was visible if embedded on an external website, now Twitter renders the tweet with javascript, turning it blank. Recently, Twitter announced that it is “working on an edit button,” and the post said the company has been working on it since last year and includes a future edit button animation on the mobile Twitter app.
Additionally, the post mentions that the company “doesn’t get the idea from a poll,” which may be a reference to a poll conducted by Elon Musk asking his 80.7 million followers if they wanted an edit button, which resulted in 440 10,000 votes, of which 73.6% said “yes”.
This feature has been a strong request from many Twitter users. However, it remains unavailable due to fears of being misused to edit the original content of the post. Twitter said that users who wanted to “fix (sometimes embarrassing) mistakes, typos, and the trending topic of the moment” found a workaround when deleting and pushing their posts.
Giving people an “edit” button means making it easier for them to change previous statements, which can distort the original story/content posted. So this feature will be done with caution.