Twitter officially bans third-party clients with new developer rules
Twitter quietly updated its rules after banning certain clients.
www.theverge.com
Twitter officially bans third-party clients with new developer rules …
archived 19 Jan 2023 23:37:43 UTC
By Mitchell Clark
Jan 19, 2023, 10:23 PM UTC
Twitter has updated its developer rules to ban third-party clients, almost a week after it unceremoniously blocked the apps’ access to its platform, offering almost no explanation to what was going on (via Engadget). The new rules state that you can’t use Twitter’s API or content to “create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.”
The rules, updated on Thursday, make it clear what that means: “Twitter Applications” refers to the company’s “consumer facing products, services, applications, websites, web pages, platforms, and other offerings, including without limitation, those offered via https://twitter.com and Twitter’s mobile applications.” The clause banning alternative services was added to the rules with the most recent update, according to the Wayback Machine.
The rule change comes after Twitter silently broke several popular third-party Twitter clients like Tweetbot and Twitterific starting on January 12th. At the time, the developers behind the apps (many of which have historically shaped the entire Twitter user experience) said they had received no communication whatsoever from the company about what was happening. Then, on January 17th, the company’s developer account tweeted that it was “enforcing its long-standing API rules,” which “may result in some apps not working.”
The statement was not positively received. Several commentators and developers pointed out the lack of clarity about what rules were actually being broken and the fact that the apps had been running for years before Elon Musk purchased Twitter and started espousing plans to turn it into an “everything app.” In 2021, former Twitter developer platform lead Amir Shevat told me that the company was specifically trying to make it easier for developers to compete with Twitter’s first-party apps with a recent rule change.
“We have been respectful of their API rules, as published, for the past 16 years,” wrote Ged Maheux, a co-founder of Twitterific developer The Iconfactory, in a blog post about the app being down. “We have no knowledge that these rules have changed recently or what those changes might be.”
Craig Hockenberry, principal at Iconfactory, put it more bluntly on his personal blog: “There was no advance notice for its creators, customers just got a weird error, and no one is explaining what’s going on. We had no chance to thank customers who have been with us for over a decade. Instead, it’s just another scene in their ongoing shit show.”
Paul Haddad @paul@tapbots.social
source (archive)Finally some clarity we apparently broke the long standing rule of "use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications”.
I guess I didn't realize long standing actually means a couple hours ago, once again I'm deeply sorry.
Twitter’s new developer terms ban third-party clients | Engadget
Twitter has quietly updated its developer agreement to make clear that app makers are no longer permitted to create their own clients..www.engadget.com
Money is likely one of the reasons behind the rule change and third-party client ban. Twitter has been struggling financially since Musk took over, saddling it with billions in debt, and third-party clients don’t earn it any money. The company doesn’t serve ads via its API, and people using third-party clients may not be as interested in the Twitter Blue subscription service, which mainly adds features to the official Twitter app.
There seemingly hasn’t been any official announcement of the rule change, either from Twitter Dev or Elon Musk. Twitter doesn’t have a communications department to contact.
The Shit Show • furbo.org
Well, it happened. We knew it was coming. A prick pulled the plug. And what bothers me most about it is how Space Karen did it. My mom passed away just before Christmas. Her decline was something everyone in the family saw coming and we prepared for her demise. It still hurts like hell, but […]
The Shit Show
Well, it happened.We knew it was coming.
A prick pulled the plug. And what bothers me most about it is how Space Karen did it.
My mom passed away just before Christmas. Her decline was something everyone in the family saw coming and we prepared for her demise. It still hurts like hell, but she left with love and dignity. That makes all the difference when it comes to coping with loss.
Twitterrific is something that we’ve all poured our love into for the past 16 years. I’m not usually one to toot my own horn, but we literally crafted the early experience on the service. We often hear that folks joined up because of our app. Our work was definitive and groundbreaking. We loved this app like I loved my mom.
(Note today’s date and the one on our announcement – the fuckwads missed our 16th anniversary by a couple of days! King Shithead probably thought Friday the 13th was lol. I’d love some proof that the API went down at 04:20 in UTC +1.)
Like my mom, the API has been declining for awhile. Endpoints were removed, new features were unavailable to third parties, and rate limiting restricted what we could do. And like my mom, we struggled on and did the best we could, trying to stay upbeat about it all.
What bothers me about Twitterrific’s final day is that it was not dignified. There was no advance notice for its creators, customers just got a weird error, and no one is explaining what’s going on. We had no chance to thank customers who have been with us for over a decade. Instead, it’s just another scene in their ongoing shit show.
But I guess that’s what you should expect from a shitty person.
Personally, I’m done. And with a vengeance.
First, arrogant bastards love seeing their names on tweets and other media. I want to starve him of the things that money can’t buy: respect and attention. Do the same by simply ignoring him and his kingdom.
Secondly, for the past several months I’ve been thinking about where we go from here. When you see decline, you plan for a demise. It was the last thing mom taught me.
I’ve been active on Mastodon since the billionaire bozo took over. And it makes me think.
One thing I’ve noticed is that everyone is going to great lengths to make something that replaces the clients we’ve known for years. That’s an excellent goal that eases a transition in the short-term, but ignores how a new open standard (ActivityPub) can be leveraged in new and different ways.
Federation exposes a lot of different data sources that you’d want to follow. Not all of these sources will be Mastodon instances: you may want to stay up-to-date with someone’s Micro.blog, or maybe another person’s Tumblr, or someone else’s photo feed. There are many apps and servers for you to choose from.
It feels like the time is right for a truly universal timeline. That notion excites me like the first time I posted XML status to an endpoint.
One thing I remember from these early days: no one had any idea what they were doing. It was all new and things like @screen_name, #hashtags, or RT hadn’t been invented yet. Heck, we didn’t even call them “tweets” or use a bird icon at first! The best ideas came from people using the service: all of the things mentioned above grew organically from a need.
That’s where I want to be in the future. Exploring unknown territory that empowers others and adapts to the needs of a community.
There’s no sense in clinging to the personal whims of a clown leading a shit show. Especially when his circus will end up being a $44 billion version of MySpace.
