WordPress 5.5 to Remove Hulu from List of Supported oEmbed Providers

WordPress 5.5 will be dropping Hulu oEmbed support after Hulu silently disabled its oEmbed API. This is the API that allows users to copy and paste a link into the editor and have it automatically embed the content, as opposed to copying a chunk of embed code. Documentation contributors discovered that it wasn’t working while attempting to document the Hulu Embed block.

Birgit Pauli-Haack confirmed with Hulu that embedding is not currently an option. Hulu support did not elaborate on why it was removed.

Apologies for any disappointment! This isn’t an available option at the moment, but we’ll express your interest. If there’s anything else we can help out with down the road, please don’t hesitate to reach back out!

— Hulu Support (@hulu_support) July 16, 2020

The block currently displays an error when attempting to embed a Hulu link, stating “Sorry, this content could not be embedded.” As a result, WordPress contributors have removed both the block from the editor and the provider from core.

WordPress has included Hulu oEmbed support for the past 11 years, since it was first added in WordPress 2.9 (December 2009). Services are logged on WordPress.org as they are added or removed. Hulu was removed as soon as it was discovered that oEmbed support no longer worked, similar to other previously unsupported providers – most recently FunnyOrDie and Photobucket. This is a major loss of convenience for users who are trying to embed Hulu links but it lies outside of WordPress’ control.