Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

kevinmarks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 254 posts

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

#41

Post by cerved »

Closi wrote: post #24
WatchDog wrote: post #10

Functionality aside embedding random scripts from twitter seems like a big risk for security and privacy. At a minimum, it should probably be embedded in a sandboxed iframe. Just taking a screenshot, and linking to the tweet, seems like a more robust solution, that won't randomly stop working, and doesn't have the same privacy issues.

Totally agree. I wonder if this is by-design. Lots of companies would love to have control of a javascript snippet operating on the worlds biggest websites.

This practice can hardly come as news. They all do this with their social buttons and have been for almost 20 years

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

#42

Post by mschuster91 »

sdoering wrote: post #23
btown wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider it from the context of a "right to be forgotten" though. Setting aside whether that should be a legal right, there's certainly some kind of argument that if the right-to-be-forgotten is at some level a moral good, then technologies that assist in enforcing that right have at least some level of moral justification in doing so. Does that override the rights of a website operator to expect that their tools wil…

I think we need to look at this more like grading on a curve. If I were still actively using Twitter and posting something that I later delete - OK. I can see the argument from a 'right to be forgotten' point of view. If the president of the US does so to beautify the public record, not so much. In Germany we have the concept of a person of public interest. People who are publicly visible due to their position in pol…

> So Twitter deciding to use privacy as an argument to enable a few reported on whales to beautify their record (because let's be fair, who embedded a tweet from Jane Doe?) seems at least questionable.

It's not just a few whales. Imagine you're being arrested, someone films that arrest while the cops are speaking your PII (name, address) into their radios, and the video of the arrest ends up on Twitter.

Under "right to be forgotten", you could (and can) demand removal of that video - but your data would still be floating around the net.

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

#43

Post by paxys »

lapser wrote: post #38
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.

Aesthetics and familiarity? It's a lot nicer to link the user's name directly to their profile, and the date directly to their tweet on Twitter as opposed to having a separately link or whatnot. For many, especially your average Joe/Jane, will expect the aforementioned behaviour.

Well if you want Twitter's aesthetics then you have to import their CSS/JS and let them "edit your site". Or recreate all of it yourself. What solution are people looking for exactly?

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

#45

Post by hda2 »

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…

> Twitter is under no obligation to retain this kind of stuff on your behalf.

They declared something worked one way then silently changed how that thing works without properly announcing the change first and giving people enough time to adapt. Would you still be willing to make these excuses if your emails provider decided to do the same thing?

Even if it's their system, there's a limit where people would rightfully start to object.

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

#46

Post by mypalmike »

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #37
riffic wrote: post #7

fix the title please An apostrophe as a possessive marker in its is nonstandard: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/it%27s#Etymology_2

Non-standard doesn't mean improper. It's still valid English. Just because some people are too lazy to type or comprehend an apostrophe in the word "it's" to signify "it is" doesn't mean that the rest of us have to follow their lazy example.

The problem isn't the use of "it's" to mean "it is". The problem is the use of "it's" to mean "its", a different word with a different meaning.

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

#48

Post by dumpsterdiver »

abofh wrote: post #40
dumpsterdiver wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-standard doesn't mean improper. It's still valid English. Just because some people are too lazy to type or comprehend an apostrophe in the word "it's" to signify "it is" doesn't mean that the rest of us have to follow their lazy example.

In which case, it's still wrong in the title. Just because people are too lazy to scroll up and read the erroneous title doesn't mean nit picking pedantry makes them correct.

I just scrolled back up to the title and realized that my argument is totally wrong. They weren't trying to say "it is". I was wrong.

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

#49

Post by iforgotpassword »

I've never understood why people even wanted to use this. For the styling? So you can just copy some random stuff from Twitter and it looks like Twitter but is also interactive?

Just with the Facebook like-Button, you're exposing your visitors to the tracking of Twitter.

For what? Just so you can quickly copy one snippet and be done with it, instead of manually copying author name, content and link and spending 10 seconds to format this yourself.

I wish I had something constructive to say, but this always seemed like a totally unnecessary "feature" with a lot of downsides. Instead of embedding 280 characters in your website you make it download an order of magnitude more from somewhere else and then execute code to display those characters in a way someone else deems appropriate.

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

#50

Post by retSava »

ghayes wrote: post #21
riffic wrote: post #7

fix the title please An apostrophe as a possessive marker in its is nonstandard: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/it%27s#Etymology_2

Curious if there’s any reason this is of particular importance. E.g. is it bad for screen readers?

We as human beings should always strive for the better, to improve, to do the best we can within reasonable bounds.

It's imo not about pettiness, finding errors of others to shame them, or holding others to a bar set too high, but rather, if we don't, we start tumbling towards lesser good things as a society and community and humans.

Not to say that it's not ok do make errors (it is, and it's human), but if we spot one and can easily correct it, we should.

Post reply on HN