There seems no way back for some third-party Twitter clients that abruptly stopped working last week. The company yesterday confirmed that it was a deliberate move and not a bug or glitch in its API (application programming interface). “Twitter is enforcing its long-standing API rules,” the social network tweeted from its developer account on Tuesday. “That may result in some apps not working.”
Twitter confirms it is blocking some third-party clients
Last Friday, several third-party Twitter clients went down at once. Platforms like Tweetbot and Twitterrific stopped working all of a sudden. Users who relied on these platforms to access their Twitter account instead of the Twitter mobile apps or the web client could no longer log in. The way things panned out, it appeared to be a bug in Twitter API, preventing access to these third parties. The company, meanwhile, remained silent on the matter, adding to the frustration of developers. It wasn’t clear what was happening.
A couple of days later, reports emerged that it was a deliberate move from Twitter. “Third-party app suspensions are intentional,” The Information saw a company engineer saying on Slack. The social network still chose to remain silent, though. Now, almost a week later, Twitter has finally confirmed that the decision was indeed intentional. Unfortunately, it failed to shed more light on the “API rules” that the affected third-party clients violated.
This is understandably frustrating for the developers of these platforms. “Tweetbot has been around for over 10 years, [and] we’ve always complied with the Twitter API rules,” Tweetbot maker Tapbots said. “If there’s some existing rule that we need to comply with, we’d be happy to do so, if possible. But we do need to know what it is.” Hopefully, Twitter will come up with an elaborate explanation soon. The company doesn’t have a communications department, so it isn’t answering media requests.
But by the looks of it, Twitter seems to be doing this to force users to stick to its own platforms instead of using third-party apps. That’s because those outside solutions don’t bring any revenue to the company. The social network behemoth is already suffering a decline in ad revenue, so any additional revenue would help. As a cost-cutting measure, Twitter has drastically reduced its staffing. The company now has less than half the employees it had before Elon Musk’s takeover in October last year. We will let you know if Twitter provides further clarification on the decision to block third-party clients.
Tweetbot has been around for over 10 years, we’ve always complied with the Twitter API rules.
If there’s some existing rule that we need to comply with, we’d be happy to do so, if possible. But we do need to know what it is…@TwitterDev, you know how to reach us. https://t.co/RujogIjRvx
— Tapbots (@tapbots) January 17, 2023
Discussion about this post