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Twitter Confirms Third-Party Apps Like Tweetbot Were Intentionally Blocked

I’m assuming this violated a contract somewhere and we’ll see some lawsuits soon.

I used Twitteriffic for years. They had a dark mode before iOS had one! One of my favorite apps.

I moved to Mastodon back in October and haven’t looked back.
 
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foobarbaz said:
This isn't about whether they should allow 3rd-party apps.

It's about giving a huge middle finger to users and (I guess now former) business partners instead of having the decency to a) make an announcement, b) give a transition period (however short), and c) be truthful about the reasons. And he wonders why advertisers don't trust him.

The shutting down, I understand. Although, personally, I would have tried to monetize users that care enough to pick an alternative client, first. But, hey, it's his right to shut it down, and it's the users' right to go somewhere else then …
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It's the burning bridges when he really didn't have to that really makes me wonder what other confrontations are brewing behind closed doors. Is this a case where the museum is on fire and they had to let the natural history wing burn to focus on saving the art or is this just unabated vindictiveness towards everthing he doesn't like or understand?

I can also just imagine a meeting where he asked for the status of something and the project manger said it would take some extra time because they have to update the API to support the change and Musk made a snap decision to cut off the API without giving it a second thought.
 
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visualseed said:
It's the burning bridges when he really didn't have to that really makes me wonder what other confrontations are brewing behind closed doors. Is the a case where the museum is on fire and they had to let the natural history wing burn to focus on saving the art or is this just unabated vindictiveness towards everthing he doesn't like or understand?

I can also just imagine a meeting where he asked for the status of something and the project manger said it would take some extra time because they have to update the API to support the change and Musk made a snap decision to cut off the API.
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100% the bolded and no other option....


you dont even need to look past the first week he "owned" twitter and how he treated employees during the "layoffs"
 
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stevet said:
This has nothing to do with firing the Pr team, at all. This was his call and even if they had a pr team it would have been done this way.
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Right. Elon would never have taken advice from a stupid PR team. Elon can do anything and knows everything better than everyone! Honestly, I don't know why he doesn't fire everyone, and just do everything himself-- much simpler! Company of one! He can run the company while tweeting brilliancies with his feet, colonizing Mars with his left earlobe, and revolutionizing urban transport with a spare nostril. He doesn't really have to do much with Tesla, that company can just be run by AI at this point.
 
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I didn't read all the replies but I think this has to do with cost cutting and trying to cut down on bots, which has been a huge problem on Twitter. Less bot activity, less costs going out on no income accounts. Less API traffic, less cost. No sense paying for accounts who are not real.
 
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Setok said:
The amount of stuff on the federated view depends on the size of the server you are on. Smaller servers can have a pace that is more manageable and you can actually find some posts and people that way.

But I think mostly it’s a bit of a gimmick. The Explore/Trends is more useful.
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I thought the Local feed was just for your server, and Federated was all servers your server knows about. It’s all newish to me though, so I’ll keep poking around. I’ll also check out Explore/Trends. Thanks for that!
 
h3ysw5nkan said:
If you block ads and charge customers without paying Twitter...

Yeah, Elon will block you.
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I don’t actually disagree with this take. Third party twitter clients, especially those that block ads, shouldn’t be allowed if they don’t jive with Twitter’s core business model.

I am not bitter that they are dead, but there doesn’t seem to be any acceptable explanation for Elon Musk executing this in the way that he did, save that he can because he’s the boss. The service just went down overnight, people were left in the dark, and then Twitter trots out some lame excuse in response.

Just come out on board and state unequivocally that twitter is not going to support third party apps moving forward, explain why, and give a clear timeline for the transition. It’s not that hard.

It just says more about his style of leadership than anything else.
 
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"Without access to the underlying code for the social network...popular Twitter clients are non-functional and cannot be used"

It's unlikely they ever had (or needed) access to the source code.
 
Abazigal said:
I don’t actually disagree with this take. Third party twitter clients, especially those that block ads, shouldn’t be allowed if they don’t jive with Twitter’s core business model.

I am not bitter that they are dead, but there doesn’t seem to be any acceptable explanation for Elon Musk executing this in the way that he did, save that he can because he’s the boss. The service just went down overnight, people were left in the dark, and then Twitter trots out some lame excuse in response.

Just come out on board and state unequivocally that twitter is not going to support third party apps moving forward, explain why, and give a clear timeline for the transition. It’s not that hard.

It just says more about his style of leadership than anything else.
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The third party API allows ads, they (twitter) have not enabled it... so its completely on twitter.. these apps have been active and in use for 10+ years and suddenly it all changes when "elon" owns Twitter?

gk_brown said:
"Without access to the underlying code for the social network...popular Twitter clients are non-functional and cannot be used"

It's unlikely they ever had (or needed) access to the source code.
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Uh... they pay a fee for API access, they had access that was revoked without warning and it took twitter 6 days to come up with that horsepoop of a statement today
 
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From one of the Twitterrific devs
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 ****wads missed our 16th anniversary by a couple of days! King ******** 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 **** show.

But I guess that’s what you should expect from a ****** person.

Personally, I’m done. And with a vengeance.
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furbo.org by Craig Hockenberry

furbo.org is Craig Hockenberry's place to write for the web. He makes app and runs websites.
furbo.org furbo.org
 
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soloer said:
I’m not completely certain what the point of the Federated feed is though. No way is anyone ever going to keep up with it.
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The federated feed is a firehose of too much info about things I don't care about. I ignore it. Enough people I like interacting with moved over so my home feed feels active.
 
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Elon Musk is a jerk. Some people don’t care because the people he’s being jerks to are people they don’t like. All Elon seems to care about these days is having the right enemies.
 
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Canyda said:
Dear Twitter users: Create a list of people you follow. Swipe to that list to read their tweets in proper linear order with no ads and no inserted tweets from people you don't follow. You're welcome.
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The third-party app users were there because they offered functionality that the native Twitter app did not. Scheduled tweets, filters, grouping different accounts, etc. Sadly, your "solution" isn't one.
 
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MacHeritage said:
I didn't read all the replies but I think this has to do with cost cutting and trying to cut down on bots, which has been a huge problem on Twitter. Less bot activity, less costs going out on no income accounts. Less API traffic, less cost. No sense paying for accounts who are not real.
Click to expand...

It doesn’t make sense for bot accounts to be originating from a paid app that has a cap on the number of users it can onboard.

Occam’s razor suggests that Elon Musk is hoping that by shutting down these apps, users will go back to the stock twitter apps where they can be served ads. Which suggests that twitter blue hasn’t been successful as a revenue source, plus third party app users are in the minority, so it’s unlikely they could earn that much off us in the first place.

I guess this is how it ends for me. Twitter was always a news feed for me, Tweetbot was what made the service useable (no ads, chronological feed, support for latest features like safari view controller and proper share sheet). If I can’t browse twitter via Tweetbot, then I just won’t.
 
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Just when the stock price was finally on the mend they have to do another stunt :cool:

Killing the API won't stop the "bots", because it's still cheap to rent a hangar full of people from a developing country and tell them what to do.
 
dannyyankou said:
I use Twitter mainly for sports news and highlights, and unfortunately there's very little sports content on Mastodon at this point.

I can use Reddit for that in the meantime, though
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I agree- along with local news and tech stuff. I would love to drop twitter but not sure Mastodon comes close yet.
 
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ipedro said:
I'll admit, I bought into the Elon is a genius con for years but now the con is as clear as day that the companies he's associated with were successes in spite of him with the actual competent people behind him while he took credit. He doesn't have that at Twitter. Nobody is there to say no to him or do things the right way while feeding his ego that he's leading them to success. No other explanation as to why he's blown $44 BILLION dollars destroying the only value that Twitter had: its users.
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I wish we had the option of thumbs-upping multiple times. Instead I'll just do this
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍​
 
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canadianreader said:
Twitter Inc sued Musk to force him to complete the $44 billion acquisition.
apnews.com

Twitter sues to force Musk to complete his $44B acquisition

Twitter sued Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday to force him to complete the $44 billion acquisition of the social media company.
apnews.com apnews.com
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they only sued, because he was to chicken to pay the "breakup fee"

he was trying to come up with any damn excuse under the sun to backout of the deal without paying the breakup fee.
 
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