Twitter Is Secretly Changing The Appearance Of Deleted Tweets On External Websites

Twitter has started showing empty boxes on external sites. (Photo: Kevin Marks Blog Screenshot)

JAKARTA - Twitter appears to be quietly changing the appearance for deleted tweets when embedded on a third-party website.

According to reports circulating, this change occurred around the end of March. Twitter starts showing empty boxes on external sites when an embedded tweet has been deleted.

The changes are detailed in a blog post from Kevin Marks, the company changing embedded javascript so that deleted tweet text is no longer visible in embeds on third-party websites.

Previously, the text of a deleted tweet was still visible on the web page where the tweet was embedded, but now Twitter uses javascript to render the tweet as an empty white box.

Overall, this may not seem like a big change to Twitter, but it's one that has significant implications.

Twitter senior product manager Eleanor Harding said the change was made to be more respectful when people choose to delete their tweets. However, it also impacts tweets that have been deleted for other reasons, such as when the account that posted them has been suspended.

Citing The Verge, Thursday, April 7, an example is the account of former President of the United States (US) Donald Trump, whose account was suspended in early 2021. This means that hundreds of articles embedding Trump's posts no longer work.

However, that doesn't mean Trump's tweets are gone forever. Since his suspension from the platform, third-party archives have emerged to catalog his posts, and other services exist to track deleted tweets from public officials. But Twitter's changes make it harder to see these tweets in the context of news stories written about them.

Information about Twitter's changes to deleted tweets has emerged just hours after the company officially announced it was working on an edit button for the service, which would allow users to change the content of tweets once they have been posted.

Unfortunately, the feature has raised concerns that users will be able to edit statements which are an important matter of public record.