Why is the journalistic standard to embed tweets (xeets?) instead of using screenshots?

An embedded tweet can be deleted, and depends on X supporting the functionality. If editing is ever introduced on the platform, it would permanently break all past articles that don’t have an independent record of the tweet (such as a full quote in the article or a screenshot). X can potentially (and maybe does) embed tracking features.

It seems like there are a lot of good reasons not to use embedded tweets, but almost every news source does it this way. Is there a good reason why?

  • edric@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Or they can do both. Post a screenshot and link the tweet below it so users have the option to click to the source. I don’t explicitly block twitter but it’s so bad that more often than not the embedded tweet doesn’t display when viewing the page with uBO.