Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
69,015
40,051


Third-party Twitter apps like Tweetbot and Twitterrific have been intentionally blocked from using Twitter APIs, Twitter confirmed today. Without access to the underlying code for the social network, Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Birdie, Echofon, and other popular Twitter clients are non-functional and cannot be used.

Twitter-Feature.jpg

Twitter's Dev account today said in a tweet that Twitter is "enforcing its long-standing API rules," a change that could cause some apps not to work. There has been no word on which API rules the blocked Twitter clients have violated, and this is the first time that Twitter has provided insight into what's going on with third-party Twitter apps since they stopped working last Thursday.

When some third-party Twitter apps became unusable last week, it was initially believed that there could be some kind of bug causing the outage. Only the most popular Twitter clients were affected and blocked from Twitter's APIs, perhaps indicating an internal error. As Twitter declined to comment on the situation for days, however, it became clearer that it was an intentional decision. Over the weekend, The Information said that in an internal Slack channel, a senior software engineer at Twitter clarified that the suspensions were done on purpose, suggesting many Twitter employees were not even aware of what was going on.

It is not known why Twitter has provided so little information on what is happening to highly popular third-party Twitter apps that have existed for years, nor if these apps will again be provided with access to the API if changes are made. Developers like Iconfactory and Tapbots (responsible for Twitterrific and Tweetbot, respectively), received no warning about the shutdown and were not provided with information on why their apps stopped working.

Apps like Tweetbot have been around for more than a decade at this point, with loyal users, full teams of developers, and a major investment in the social network. Developers have expressed their frustration at Twitter's decision and lack of communication, as have longtime Twitter users.

MacStories, for example, called Twitter's actions "disgraceful" and "unprofessional," with Twitter demonstrating a "total lack of respect" for the role that third-party apps have played in the success of the social network.

Jason Snell called Twitter's actions "clueless, classless, and cowardly," and John Gruber said this is likely the end of his regular usage of Twitter as Twitter's own client is "terrible."

At this point, it isn't clear when or if we're going to get more information about third-party Twitter clients from Twitter, nor if the apps that have had their API access revoked will be back in some capacity. Tapbots is now speeding up development on Ivory, its app for the Mastodon social network, and Twitterrific's Craig Hockenberry said that he will be exploring the concept of a truly universal timeline that leverages how open standards can be used in "new and different ways."

Article Link: Twitter Confirms Third-Party Apps Like Tweetbot Were Intentionally Blocked
 
Tweebot has been around for 10 years.. I would LOVE to know what "rule" they broke, given they have existed for 10 years without any issues...

And lol at that "statement" from twitter... It took you 6 days to come up with that crap? A six year old could come up with a better statement in a day


Elon is a Coward....
 
I mean, this story just came out today:


He's been a fraud all along.
 
I wonder what else was in this joint? I'm no business genius, but it sure looks like Musk isn't making many very good moves to me.

View attachment 2143820
He doesn't know what he's exactly he is doing. Poor guy lost a fortune and has daily headaches. But he did all this to himself. He needs to take accountability for it and stop blaming others.

No, I don’t feel bad for him.
 
Last edited:
This is also what happens when one egotistical CEO fires all of his PR team (like he did at Twitter and Tesla) Because he cant dare let a PR team release something that makes "ME" look bad

PR teams exist for a reason....
 
Jason Snell called Twitter's actions "clueless, classless, and cowardly,"

Yup.

Leaving aside speculation whether this is a smart move (I imagine a fair number of "influential" Twitter users are still mainly using third-party clients, and they just kicked many of those out): if they had said "we're phasing out support for clients by February 1st", that would've been one thing. Still a drastic step, but at least something everyone could prepare for. Instead, there was zero warning, and no communication for days.

Imagine being a developer of an iOS Twitter client. Not only do you have to deal with Apple's capricious App Review behavior; you have Twitter Inc.'s even more capricious API policy changes on top of that. First, they heavily benefit from third-party clients. Then, they decide to severely restrict them by limiting their tokens and deciding not to evolve the API. Then they do a 180 on that and start working on a new API. And then finally, with zero prior announcement, they pull the rug altogether. Companies like Tapbots and Iconfactory may have to lay off staff because of this. Who wants to work with a company this unpredictable in their business relations?
 
I mean, this story just came out today:


He's been a fraud all along.

He's Henry 'Remember how bad he was' Ford with a sprinkling of Elizabeth Holmes.
 
Many power users only use these 3rd-party apps so they can schedule tweets, etc. You've now lost the last group of people who could potentially have saved Twitter.

Personally I think it was already too far gone but this will be the straw that broke the camel's back.
 
Many power users only use these 3rd-party apps so they can schedule tweets, etc. You've now lost the last group of people who could potentially have saved Twitter.

Personally I think it was already too far gone but this will be the straw that broke the camel's back.

Don't worry it's a self driving camel....sometimes crashes...sometimes catches fire...can't actually self drive very well
 
they are going to do this kind of bs why not at least make the native clients usable? The Mac client constantly crashes if you attempt to open the right click context menu and the Android client is just buggy. More OSes than iOS exist and it is tiring acting like it doesn’t. I now am forced to use the Web client on my Mac that just a few short months ago had a working and smooth Twitter application.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.