is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
Following Twitter, Instagram, and others, Facebook has officially added the option to embed status updates, photos, or videos from its users on any site. Until now, reposting something that had been written on Facebook usually required taking a screenshot or copying the text, leaving its source difficult to find. A few weeks ago, though, Facebook started letting a few sites directly add embedded posts; now, that option is open to anyone. To use it, all you need to do is find it on Facebook and select “Embed Post” in a dropdown menu on the side, then copy that code as you would any other embedded content.
For everyone who’s reading something on a page rather than writing it, the embeds are also a way to directly interact with a post. Readers will have the option to do anything they could on the main site, including reading comments, liking a post, or following the person behind it. To stop someone from sharing anything you might want to keep between friends, a post has to be public in order to embed it. Getting people to interact directly with posts is obviously in the company’s best interest, but it’s also convenient for anyone who wants to talk about something from Facebook without actually being on Facebook.
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