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Twitter is using its embedded JavaScript to hide tweets that have been deleted

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Re: Twitter is using its embedded JavaScript to hide tweets that have been deleted

#171

Post by macspoofing »

polydevil wrote: post #62
paxys wrote: post #33

Why not just copy paste or screenshot the Tweet? It's bizarre to reference a script from twitter.com directly in your site's source code and then complain that the script is doing exactly what it is supposed to.

- copy paste the content of the tweet - meta data is lost (date and time, author, obv it is possible to copy paste the text and add links to original tweet and link to an author; - screenshot - now you dont have to add custom styles, meta data exists, but it is not usable - you can make is to click on tweet will open a tweet, but click on tweet author will open authors profile. Also screenreaders and bots - they dont…

Well .. you're going to have to do that because the alternative is that the tweet can be pulled from your article.

>The better way would be to use twitter api and render tweets with your own styles.

How does that fix the issue of twitter obfuscating embedded tweets?

Re: Twitter is using its embedded JavaScript to hide tweets that have been deleted

#173

Post by jdrc »

saagarjha wrote: post #144
jdrc wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would they?

Because you're requesting a resource from them, and they consider that resource to be deleted?

i was responding re/ security and privacy. showing that the tweet is deleted would be expected behavior

Re: Twitter is using its embedded JavaScript to hide tweets that have been deleted

#174

Post by newswasboring »

tofuahdude wrote: post #16

You don't need to use Twitter's JS to show Tweets. If you choose to use their system, you're subject to their rules. If you don't like their rules, don't use their stuff. Calling it "altering the public record" is a little hyperbolic imo. If you want to act as a repository for the public record, you better use your own system. Twitter is under no obligation to retain this kind of stuff on your behalf. I'm not trying…

> I'm not trying to say that this is right or wrong

Why are you not, though? I feel like we have been so co-opted by the system that we forgot we are allowed to criticize it. A giant company with billions of dollars should not be given get out of moral jail free cards. They should absolutely be held to higher standards because of all the power they wield.

Re: Twitter is using its embedded JavaScript to hide tweets that have been deleted

#175

Post by macspoofing »

raverbashing wrote: post #153
theelous3 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter is under no obligation to retain this kind of stuff on your behalf. You have badly missed the most crucial message of the post. When you copy the embed link, you are copying the string literal of the tweet too. You put this text on your site. You are the one retaining it. The twitter module is hiding the text from the rendered page, rather than loading the local copy.

Yes and it's tricky because in one side you're siding with the person that copied it, and in another, with the original author of the tweet.

>with the original author of the tweet.

Not necessarily. The example VOX article[1] had Trump's tweets embedded in the article, which are now hidden. Trump didn't delete those tweets. He was banned.

[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/13/17233422/d...

Re: Twitter is using its embedded JavaScript to hide tweets that have been deleted

#176

Post by batch12 »

tofuahdude wrote: post #16

You don't need to use Twitter's JS to show Tweets. If you choose to use their system, you're subject to their rules. If you don't like their rules, don't use their stuff. Calling it "altering the public record" is a little hyperbolic imo. If you want to act as a repository for the public record, you better use your own system. Twitter is under no obligation to retain this kind of stuff on your behalf. I'm not trying…

It is entertaining to watch the waves of opinion crash against each other when things happen that people don't like. The cognitive dissonance must must a deafening roar. On one hand, people get miffed when twitter changes their JS to block out quotes of deleted tweets, citing an alteration of the public record. On the other hand, people argue that twitter is not a "public square" and can do what they want with the content and users of their platform.

Edit: clarified js change

Re: Twitter is using its embedded JavaScript to hide tweets that have been deleted

#177

Post by macspoofing »

hamilyon2 wrote: post #110
polydevil wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- copy paste the content of the tweet - meta data is lost (date and time, author, obv it is possible to copy paste the text and add links to original tweet and link to an author; - screenshot - now you dont have to add custom styles, meta data exists, but it is not usable - you can make is to click on tweet will open a tweet, but click on tweet author will open authors profile. Also screenreaders and bots - they dont…

Do web browsers nowadays have a way to save a part of html dom with every style inlined? If not, that is a huge opportunity.

I think that's an impossible problem to solve for the general case. To guarantee correct rendering, you very well need to push the site through the entire rendering/js pipeline.

Re: Twitter is using its embedded JavaScript to hide tweets that have been deleted

#178

Post by victorstanciu »

cxr wrote: post #170
victorstanciu wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Functionality aside embedding random scripts from twitter seems like a big risk for security and privacy." When I started blogging again, I wanted to render my Twitter feed on the homepage, as a sort of bitesize alternative to the regular content, but I too have a deep aversion to allowing external scripts on my websites. So I added some code to my Hugo theme that pulls the tweets from my profile via the Twitter API…

This is still "vulnerable", in a way (though not the same kind of vulnerability as embedding third-party scripts): if Twitter disappears—or just stops returning your tweets for some other reason (e.g. they shut down their API or your account)—then you lose access to your content. It can be mitigated by making sure your SSG output is also in version control—not just the input. (While you're at it, it's a good idea to…

For me, all I cared about was not loading their script. I'm not at all attached to my tweets, so I'm not really willing to put any effort into preserving them for posterity.

> That of course still leaves open the matter of whether/how you're making sure to trigger a new build for every new tweet.

Cron every five minutes.

Re: Twitter is using its embedded JavaScript to hide tweets that have been deleted

#179

Post by quitit »

batch12 wrote: post #176
tofuahdude wrote: post #16

You don't need to use Twitter's JS to show Tweets. If you choose to use their system, you're subject to their rules. If you don't like their rules, don't use their stuff. Calling it "altering the public record" is a little hyperbolic imo. If you want to act as a repository for the public record, you better use your own system. Twitter is under no obligation to retain this kind of stuff on your behalf. I'm not trying…

It is entertaining to watch the waves of opinion crash against each other when things happen that people don't like. The cognitive dissonance must must a deafening roar. On one hand, people get miffed when twitter changes their JS to block out quotes of deleted tweets, citing an alteration of the public record. On the other hand, people argue that twitter is not a "public square" and can do what they want with the co…

I feel a frequent problem in tech discussion is that the problem is greatly exaggerated, often to levels which are out of scope or come across as unreasonable demands. It has some similarities to Godwin's law.

The follow-up discussion then unfortunately is not so much about the grievance or problem, but about the needless hyperbole.

In the end, because the problem no longer feels reasonable or relatable, it seems more like the author has an axe to grind.

There's too many examples to cite, but one could follow any discussion that surrounds a change made by large tech company to find numerous examples.

Re: Twitter is using its embedded JavaScript to hide tweets that have been deleted

#180

Post by cxr »

saagarjha wrote: post #80
jdrc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be an HTML tag or something that downloads and embeds HTML from a remote site without scripting

Ok, but then Twitter is just going to make that return a 404. How does this solve the problem?

The behavior of the object element is to use its child nodes as fallback content in the event that the resource cannot be loaded, similar to the the treatment of images' alt attributes for images that fail to load. This isn't to say that this protects against a determined adversary (who might then chose not to return HTTP 404/410 and instead HTTP 200), but the mechanism is there.
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