When you visit Twitter's website your browser is fingerprinted and tracked. Then instead of being able to see the Tweet you're prompted to login or if for some reason you don't get the login prompt you might be shown advertisements which fund Elon Musk's Nazi bar. Using a Tweet viewer solves all three of these problems: you're not being tracked by Twitter, you're not shown a login prompt and lastly no advertisement money going in Elon Musk's pockets.
This should be your routine if you must share a Tweet:
-
Search for the text of the tweet and see if the same person crossposted to another social media platform like Bluesky. If that person did instead prefer a link to Bluesky. Avoiding Twitter all together is the best option.
-
If you cannot find the Tweet on any other platform edit the link to strip it of any tracking parameters. Generally you can remove the part with the question mark and everything after it. Then replace x.com or twitter.com with xcancel.com or nitter.net or another similar Tweet viewer. If you're posting on your website never use Twitter's embed code because that can put Twitter's tracking on your website. Instead consider taking a screenshot and including a link using a Tweet viewer instead of a direct link.
-
You can now safely share that link.
Avoiding linking to Twitter shows empathy because you care that other people can see what you wanted to share and are not inconvenienced with a login prompt.
Isn’t it simpler to use a neutral front end like nitter and then grab a screenshot for easier sharability?
In many cases the tweet is important because it was tweeted by a specific person. If only a screenshot is provided then one needs to go through the hassle of verifying it is a real tweet. A good approach would be to do both: post screenshot + link to neutral frontend