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Why wouldn't this just be a new Content-Type to request?

If this behavior is to be implemented through request headers, I'd prefer not to mess with Content-Type because it may be needed in the request: you could still want to PREVIEW but ask for a preferred content-type, like text/xml or application/json

It IMHO doesn't make sense to ask for "give me a preview as any JSON" - rather, you'd want a specific JSON based format for preview information (be it oEmbed-json, some json-serialization of og:-style data, jf2, ...), and thus want to ask for a content type specific to that.

Also, from a practical perspective: that approach is easy to implement by using existing tech. Attempting to introduce a new HTTP method is almost guaranteed to fail, both on a technical (getting support into all the things that process HTTP along the way) and the political (actually getting it in a standard) level.

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