Rich embeds alternative text

[Zoddo]

Hi,

In bots, we often send messages with only a rich embed (I mean, messages without text content).

These messages have a small issue: if a user locally disable embeds in its client, this will result in empty messages. This can be confusing.

A work-around to this issue would be a way to set an alternative text that would be shown if the embed is hidden for whatever reason (i.e. embeds disabled in the client, or suppressed by a mod).

This could potentially be implemented with a new field like alternative_content in the rich embed object. Or by reusing the content field (which is currently kept empty) and adding a new message flag to hide the message content if the embed is shown.

[eritbh]

I like this idea a lot. I'm one of those devs that's always included a meaningful content in all my bot's messages for this reason in the past. I'm all for encouraging devs to create messages that will be readable and useful regardless of your client settings, and this seems like it would be a very useful solution to that problem.

I think reusing the current content field and adding a flag to hide it if embeds are enabled in the client would be the best way to do this, as then you don't have to worry as much about how things are displayed if you send a message with both content and alternative_content.

[jhgg]

A more simple solution might be to just always render embeds by bots. Or render the embed content as the message content with a “show embed” link you can click.

[Bluexin]

A more simple solution might be to just always render embeds by bots. Or render the embed content as the message content with a “show embed” link you can click.

I strongly disagree with the former. People might have various reasons not to display embeds, wouldn't want to force it on them.
A "show embed" could work here, however why not combine it with the original idea? Just like your browser displays the alt-text for images when they can't load with properly built websites.

[alexs00001]

Another factor here is that mobile notifications only include the first line of the embed making for relatively unhelpful distractions to users.