Embeds: Add support for TikTok

[jblz]

​https://www.tiktok.com

It's unbelievably popular and currently not supported by the embed block. In fact, pasting a video URL at the beginning of a new block results in an "embed failed" notice like so:

---

​Developer facing documentation describes oembed functionality and advanced usage.

Adding support should be fairly straightforward on the core side by just adding the URL pattern & oembed link. We can separately add advanced support on the Gutenberg side for fine-tuning the block editor functionality if desired.

[jblz]

PR to add the support: ​https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/126

[spacedmonkey]

@jblz Thanks for your ticket. You may want to also open a ticket one ​gutenberg repo, so you can request a Tiktok block like other services.

[audrasjb]

Adds TikTok oEmbed

[audrasjb]

TikTok oEmbed rendering

[audrasjb]

Thanks for the pull request on GitHub.
I prepared the patch for SVN and milestoned the feature for the next major.

I also made a pull request on Gutenberg GitHub Repository: ​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/19345

Cheers,
Jb

[peterwilsoncc]

For the purpose of completeness could you please go through the ​checklist for whitelisting oEmbed providers, the basics are that they must

• be well-established, popular, and mainstream services,
• properly and fully implement the oEmbed specification,
• and clearly be a trusted provider.

I haven’t looked into it but I would be surprised if they don’t meet the requirements.

[audrasjb]

Hi,

I'm not a user of the application, but here are some publicly available informations about this service:

✅ Be well-established, popular, and mainstream services

As of 2018, TikTok is now available in over 150 markets, and in 75 languages. TikTok was downloaded more than 104 million times on Apple's App store during the full first half of 2018, according to data provided to CNBC by Sensor Tower, an app analytics platform based in San Francisco. It surpassed Facebook, YouTube and Instagram to become the world's most downloaded iOS app for that time period.

Source: ​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok#Evolution

✅ Properly and fully implement the oEmbed specification

Documentation about oEmbed can be found here: ​https://developers.tiktok.com/doc/Embed

🔲 Clearly be a trusted provider

I'm not sure to fully understand how to ensure the provider is a trusted provider. Maybe the above link to the Wikipedia page could help?

[jblz]

Thanks for the elaboration on the requirements, @audrasjb.

I'm not sure to fully understand how to ensure the provider is a trusted provider. Maybe the above link to the Wikipedia page could help?

+1

I'm not sure how to fully establish trustworthiness in this sort of feature. Here's some points to consider:

• They have a huge user base & have an interest in providing a trustworthy embedding service to maintain a positive public image (...though, their ​parent company is privately held & not directly beholden to shareholders)
• They've been ​reasonably responsive to COPA demands by the FTC
• They ​claim to "(want) to inspire and encourage a new generation to have a positive impact on the planet and those around them."
• They publish docs like:
  • ​https://support.tiktok.com/en/privacy-safety/community-policy-en
  • ​https://www.tiktok.com/legal/terms-of-use
  • ​https://www.tiktok.com/legal/law-enforcement

I'm not sure that any of that qualifies them to provide unfiltered HTML, but it seems to have all the building blocks for a trustworthy service to me.

[jblz]

Removing reporter-feedback tag. Please feel free to add it back if there are more questions or concerns.

[peterwilsoncc]

Replying to jblz:

Removing reporter-feedback tag. Please feel free to add it back if there are more questions or concerns.

The full list of questions from the checklist linked to above still needs to be completed before they can be whitelisted.

Going through the list has highlighted potential problems in the past -- for example Github not implementing the oembed spec -- and being complete avoids favouring any one provider.

[jblz]

@peterwilsoncc, I'm not clear on what remains to establish from the checklist.

The comment above mine asserts that the first two items are sufficiently satisfied and I left some additional analysis on the third.

RE: oembed, the linked developer doc says:

The response format follows the specification of ​https://oembed.com

Is there a validation tool we need to subject it to or something like that?

Thanks!

[peterwilsoncc]

@jblz

This is the full checklist, some of the questions have been answered above but others remain unanswered. Not everything needs a pass, but it does need to be documented as part of the ticket.

• Is the service is popular enough for core developers to have heard of it before? Is it “mainstream?”
• If similar services are already supported, how does this service compare in terms of size, features, and backing?
• Does this service have a large following on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media? Is its Twitter account verified?
• Is its oEmbed endpoint clearly established and properly documented? (Sometimes, they are just a developer’s pet project that may not be supported.)
• Does the oEmbed endpoint work with WordPress’ oEmbed auto-discovery? If not, could it be made to work with additional HTML tags or attributes being whitelisted?
• Does the service make an effort to build relationships with developers, such as through robust APIs?
• How old is the service?
• Does it have a well-established Wikipedia article? (Seriously.)
• Has anyone written a WordPress plugin that leverages the service in some way, whether adding it as an oEmbed provider, creating a shortcode, or leveraging other APIs of the service? Do these plugins have any noticeable adoption or traction that would indicate usage and demand?
• Is the provider frequently proposed?

Individually, these are all very anecdotal. But when considered holistically, it paints a pretty decent picture.

My gut instinct is TicTok ought to be added but part of the aim here is to have anecdotal data to indicate the whitelisting won't need to be deprecated in a few years.

Providing links where applicable will be helpful too.

[felipeloureirosantos]

Replying to peterwilsoncc:

Is the service is popular enough for core developers to have heard of it before? Is it “mainstream?”

Yes, it is. Their main public seems to be the ​younger generations, so that is something that might have made it not becoming so clear yet as most of those individuals are not part of the Make WordPress community, but that doesn't mean that they are not WordPress users and part of the general WordPress community somehow.

If similar services are already supported, how does this service compare in terms of size, features, and backing?

​TikTok was the most downloaded app in the US in September 2018, it means it had more downloads than apps like Facebook and Youtube for this period of time.

Does this service have a large following on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media? Is its Twitter account verified?

Yes, both ​Twitter (US account) and ​Facebook are verified and have a huge number of followers. They also seem to have ​partnership with some Youtube creators.

How old is the service?

The initial release was 3 years ago, but it was a Musical.ly merger, and ​Musical.ly had the first release in August 2014.

Does it have a well-established Wikipedia article? (Seriously.)

Yes, it has ​a really great English page and it's available in several languages. I can see that both English (121 references) and Portuguese (52 references) versions have a lot information.

Has anyone written a WordPress plugin that leverages the service in some way, whether adding it as an oEmbed provider, creating a shortcode, or leveraging other APIs of the service? Do these plugins have any noticeable adoption or traction that would indicate usage and demand?

There is a plugin developed by @audrasjb: ​https://wordpress.org/plugins/embed-block-for-tiktok/

It has not significant installation numbers so far.

Is the provider frequently proposed?

No, it's not. I would guess the same intuition that I shared on the first question: TikTok users are not (yet) on the Make WordPress community.

[felipeloureirosantos]

I was not able to answer those questions, but I suppose that ​the link provided by @audrasjb answer all these questions:

• Is its oEmbed endpoint clearly established and properly documented? (Sometimes, they are just a developer’s pet project that may not be supported.)
• Does the oEmbed endpoint work with WordPress’ oEmbed auto-discovery? If not, could it be made to work with additional HTML tags or attributes being whitelisted?
• Does the service make an effort to build relationships with developers, such as through robust APIs?

[peterwilsoncc]

Thanks folks,

I appreciate you going through the formalities to help keep the supported services considered. Let's keep this on the milestone and monitor use of the plugin.

[audrasjb]

Replying to felipeloureirosantos:

I was not able to answer those questions, but I suppose that ​the link provided by @audrasjb answer all these questions:

• Is its oEmbed endpoint clearly established and properly documented? (Sometimes, they are just a developer’s pet project that may not be supported.)
• Does the oEmbed endpoint work with WordPress’ oEmbed auto-discovery? If not, could it be made to work with additional HTML tags or attributes being whitelisted?
• Does the service make an effort to build relationships with developers, such as through robust APIs?

Yes I can confirm the link shared above answers those questions.
@peterwilsoncc: WP 5.4 beta 1 is planned in a couple of days. Are you ok to tag this ticket for commit? If not I think we should move it to 5.5.
As @felipeloureirosantos noticed, I made an (unofficial) feature plugin: ​https://wordpress.org/plugins/embed-block-for-tiktok/ to see if there is a need for this embed. It has 50+ active installations which is pretty low. But I think there is a bunch of core embeds with low usage. As core committer, it's up to you to validate this for commit in 5.4 or not :-)

[peterwilsoncc]

Yes, I’m happy if it goes in.

I’ve asked the editor team if 5.4 leaves enough time for the editor changes too.

​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/19345#issuecomment-583783085

[SergeyBiryukov]

In 47216:

Embeds: Add support for TikTok.

Props audrasjb, jblz, peterwilsoncc, felipeloureirosantos.
Fixes #49083.

[audrasjb]

Documentation added in the miscellaneous changes dev note: ​https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/02/26/miscellaneous-developer-focused-changes-in-wordpress-5-4/