If you’ve been using Twitterific, Tweetbot, or other non-working third-party Twitter clients lately, we have bad news: it looks like they will remain banned for good. However, the way Elon Musk’s Twitter enforced this ban is shady to say the least.
Last week, some of Twitter’s most popular third-party clients suddenly stopped working, without any sort of official explanation or notice to the developers from Twitter itself. Twitterific and Tweetbot devs were left in the dark, just like us, with some of them expressing their concerns on Twitter(Opens in a new window); days later, Twitter and its typically vocal CEO Musk were still silent on the matter.
Then, on January 17, The Twitter developer account tweeted unceremoniously(Opens in a new window) that the company “enforces its long-standing API rules,” which may result in “some apps not working.”
The tweet may have been deleted
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Even then, it was still unclear which API rules were being broken and by whom. Then Twitter updated its Developer contract(Opens in a new window) (via The edge(Opens in a new window)) with the following sentence: “You will not or will not attempt (and will not allow others to)… use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a service or product that is a substitute or similar to the Twitter Applications.”
Although Twitter didn’t explicitly state this rule, it’s likely the culprit behind the bans, as Twitterific and Tweetbot are apps that mimic (and enhance) Twitter’s functionality.
But here’s the confusing part: If you look at the same document on the Wayback Machine, which keeps records of website changes over time, you’ll see that the sentence quoted above was not in place(Opens in a new window) until January 19, two days after Twitter tweeted about the “old rules”.
I checked out old snapshots of the Twitter Developer Agreement page (here(Opens in a new window), here(Opens in a new window), here(Opens in a new window)and here(Opens in a new window)), and couldn’t find the phrase “create a substitute”. It’s possible that Twitter had the phrase (or a similar phrase) in this document at some point, but I couldn’t find it. It is also possible that there was the same or a similar rule in place at some point, but worded differently. But it looks like Twitter chose to first block third-party clients, then point to a “long-standing” rule that didn’t exist, and then add that rule into its developer agreement.
In any case, Twitter owns its API and is free to create and enforce rules around it, but that would be much nicer to the developers of those apps (some of which have been around for over a decade, with a devotee below) to give them a warning and clarification on the matter.
After Twitterific was blocked, its developer The Iconfactory posted a blog post(Opens in a new window) on the situation, highlighting the confusion on Twitter after Musk laid off much of the company’s workforce. “There has been no official word from Twitter on what’s going on, but that’s no surprise since the new owner has eliminated employees dedicated to keeping the API running smoothly,” the post reads. In a Jan. 17 update, the day Twitter tweeted about its “longstanding” rules, The Iconfactory said it had been “compliant with (Twitter’s) API rules, as posted, over the past 16 years. We have no knowledge that these rules have changed recently or what those changes might be.”
The tweet may have been deleted
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Similarly, on January 17, Tweetbot’s creator, Tapbots, tweeted the following: “Tweetbot has been around for over 10 years, we’ve always adhered to the Twitter API rules.”
On Thursday, The Iconfactory continued with a new blog post(Opens in a new window), saying that Twitterific had been discontinued. “We are sorry to say that the app’s sudden and disgraceful demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter – a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy and with which we no longer want to work,” the message read.
“We’re sorry to say that the app’s sudden and outrageous demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly temperamental Twitter.”
Neither Twitter nor Musk gave any reason to block third-party clients, but the likely reasons are that Tweetbots and Twitterific are in some ways better than Twitter’s official client, and the company is trying to consolidate its customer base. users in one place to earn more money from ads and its freshly revamped Twitter Blue subscription service.
