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Erin Bensinger
Erin Bensinger

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Twitter cuts off access to its API for third-party app developers

News broke at several tech-focused outlets over the weekend that Twitter seems to have purposefully cut off API access for third-party app developers, including the popular TweetBot and Twitteriffic.

Here are a few outlets' takes, with varying degrees of subjectivity:

Twitter apps are still broken and Musk is still silent - The Verge

If you can’t use Twitterific or Tweetbot, you’re not alone.

favicon theverge.com

Third-party Twitter apps are facing issues, users say | TechCrunchThird-party Twitter apps are facing issues, users say | TechCrunch

It's likely that Twitter made some changes to its API for third-party clients that resulted in these apps breaking down.

favicon techcrunch.com

I'm curious to hear from folks whose apps or primary Twitter workflows have been disrupted because of this change. How's it going out there, Twitter developers?

Top comments (14)

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spo0q profile image
spO0q πŸ’

I knew it would happen sooner or later. The party seems over.

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spo0q profile image
spO0q πŸ’ • Edited

Although, some comments blame anti-spam protection that could have gone wild. It would be very unfortunate, but it's still a possibility.

Before the "Musk era," Twitter had some issue with its ecosystem. They did not hesitate to copy some excellent third-party features, killing these apps at the same time, but many platforms use the same "tricks."

If it's only an outage, it would be one of the biggest failures of all time.

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jarvisscript profile image
Chris Jarvis

Sad to see. They're making the site less usable. It's a real shame they didn't give developers a heads up that they were ending access to their API.

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theaccordance profile image
Joe Mainwaring • Edited

It hadn't come to mind but given the shift in demeanor at the company, the cutoff doesn't surprise me. An acquisition changes the rules for the games in-progress, and if it's not in writing as part of the deal, consider it up for interpretation by the new owner.

As a developer, I hope to still continue to retain access to the API as I have used it in the past to perform bulk delete operations. I would be inclined to converse elsewhere if access to my own content became restricted.

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talalalshehri profile image
{ TALAL_ALSHEHRI }

I use Spring App twitter client and still work.

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dhravya profile image
Dhravya

My apps, tweets.beauty and @poet_this are still running fine! Even LMFAO.tech is running fine, except that I slightly broke the login.

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erinposting profile image
Erin Bensinger

Glad to hear it!

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy πŸŽ–οΈ

IFTTT integration still seems to be working just fine

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jnv profile image
Jan Vlnas

Not surprising. The API still works, they just deliberately pulled the plug for the largest 3rd party clients.

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neumatic_78 profile image
neu-ma-tic

me when funny

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chriisduran profile image
Christopher Duran

Wow, Really Twitter goes worst,
I was thinking soon the APIs will stop working.
Image description!

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jwp profile image
John Peters

The last 10 years of social platform dominance and its censorship will wash out in stock prices continuing to crash in 2023. Is any social platform worth over $300.00 with no PE ratio?

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adesoji1 profile image
Adesoji1

Why?