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?
Embeds update to reflect your typeface setting, scaling for larger or smaller screens, are compatible with screen readers… and you are giving immediate access to the original source. Screenshots are completely static and could be easily faked etc. Having archived copies of things is good of course but there’s no real reason to do it for the display version in a webpage
Although this provides the best experience (very broadly speaking) for new users. It only takes looking at websites from 20 years ago to realize that it ages very poorly and no one maintains the links/external media once they break.
This seems like the most reasonable (and ethical) reason for the decision. Someone else mentioned ToS, which might be a stronger (but not necessarily ethical) reason. I would think that if it is not a result of the Terms, problems with embedding strongly outweigh the benefits. If it’s just about the Terms, I’d think a good journalist should quote the text in the article (same as reporting on any public statement), then hyperlink the site.
That would fully be compatible with device and accessibility settings, and provide the same verification as the embedded X. It would be better for journalism because editing could happen from the X side in the future, including removal, which is already possible. It would be better for privacy, web integrity, etc.
It’s probably easier to do too.