After days of uncertainty and speculation, Twitter confirmed that it intentionally blocked third-party clients like tweetbot. The company shared a tweet in the official account for developers where it indicates the reason for this decision. According to the information, the social network you are enforcing your api rules that have been around for a long time.
The decision confirms what was said over the weekend, when a leak assured that the movement was intentional. “Twitter is enforcing their API rules. That may result in some apps not working,” he said on one of his official channels. The strange thing is that the company does not mention what is the rule (or rules) that the third-party apps violate.
Twitter has also not shared a link to its terms of use or contacted the affected developers. According to The Verge, Tweetbot co-creator Paul Haddad said they are still awaiting a formal response from the company. “If there’s any rule that we’ve been unknowingly breaking for the last 10 years or more, we’d love to know what it is so that, if possible, we can abide by it,” Haddad said.
Both Tweetbot and other affected clients remain attentive to what Elon Musk or an official channel can say. After the closure of the communication area due to the massive layoffs, the tweets of the tycoon Musk and the leaks to the media are the only alternatives to find out what is happening in the company. For now there is only confusion, since there are other applications that have not been affected.
Twitter is likely to permanently block Tweetbot
Twitter’s decision to block third party clients is due to a violation of the API rules. The company has not revealed which section is violated, although I could make up a new rule to justify it. The most recent example of this was a modification to the terms of use to ban links to Mastodon, Instagram and other social networks, a move that ended up being reversed within a few hours.
The blocking of Tweetbot and other apps would have its origin in the aggressive advertising strategy implemented by Twitter. After the arrival of Elon Musk, the company you are trying to maximize the number of ads that are displayed to each user. If you’ve seen two ads on the screen when you open the app, you know what we mean.
The fact that users pay to use a client that removes ads means reduced revenue for Twitter. The decision to intentionally block them makes sense, after all, companies like Instagram or YouTube do the same and prevent third parties from taking advantage of their platforms. To this is added the arrival of a new tab “For you” where personalized content is offered by an algorithm.
It is worth mentioning that It is not the first time that Twitter has tried to kill third-party clients. In August 2012, the social network implemented a controversial API change that limited apps to 100,000 users. The decision was criticized by many, especially those who used Tweetbot for Mac, which had to survive with that limitation.
things are different now and there is no longer a Jack Dorsey trying to balance business with what is fair to users. Twitter is a company and Elon Musk needs to recover the 44 billion invested. If that means shutting off the faucet forever to third-party customers, you’ll do it without a second thought.