Twitter’s Suspension of Third-Party Apps Intentional, Tweetbot Taken Down Again: Report

Twitter has not provided any official communication to third-party clients in light of the suspension.

Written by Manas Mitul, Edited by David Delima | Updated: 16 January 2023 11:51 IST

Twitter’s Suspension of Third-Party Apps Intentional, Tweetbot Taken Down Again: Report

Photo Credit: Reuters

Users lost Twitter access via third-party apps like Twitterrific, Tweetbot, and Fenix last week

Highlights

Twitter third-party apps were suspended on Thursday
Tweetbot was back on briefly after it swapped API keys
Twitter's internal communication reportedly says block is intentional

Twitter became inaccessible via third-party apps last week. Now it appears that the Elon Musk-owned microblogging site has intentionally suspended popular third-party Twitter clients, including Tweetbot. According to a report, Twitter's move to bar third-party apps was intentional, and users can now only access the platform via the official Twitter app. Additionally, Tweetbot co-creator Paul Haddad also confirmed that the suspension appears to be on purpose. Tweetbot was working again for a few hours on Sunday after it used a workaround, but was soon inaccessible for users on iOS. This, according to Haddad, was proof that Twitter was intentionally revoking access for third-party clients.

The Information reports that the block, which began affecting third-party twitter app users last week, is intentional. The report cites Twitter's internal Slack communication, which reportedly confirms the decision. Neither Twitter nor its CEO Elon Musk have, however, provided a reason for the suspension.

Haddad, in a Mastodon post, also said that Tweetbot did not receive "even a shred of communication” from Twitter ahead of the suspension, while confirming that the third-party app was down again. “And now dead again, along with some old unused API keys, which proves that this was intentional and we and others were specifically targeted,” he wrote.

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Haddad elaborated in a separate post that he had not received any communication, officially or unofficially, from anyone at Twitter, even after the app went down, briefly returned, and went down again. “Even without these leaks if you add up the lack of communication, only impacting the top 25-50 Twitter API clients and clients showing up as suspended in the dev. Dashboard,” he wrote. “The only conclusion at this point is that it was intentional and not any kind of bug.”

Tweetbot briefly seemed to be working again when they swapped out their API keys, and a Gadgets360 staff member was able to log in to the service before it was inaccessible again, earlier on Monday. An API is a software interface that allows communication between two or more programs. All Twitter third-party clients utilise the Twitter API to access the service.

According to tweets from an iOS developer-duo that goes by ‘Mysk' on twitter (@mysk_co), Tweetbot started working with some restrictions after it used new API credentials for the app. Users, however, could only share 300 posts per 15 minutes. “Twitter API is not broken,” the developers said. While Tweetbot's return was short-lived, popular third-party client Twitterrific continues to remain suspended.

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This is a proof that #Twitter has deliberately suspended @tweetbot. The developers just created a new Twitter API app and obtained new credentials. The app works, albeit with limits. Twitter API is not broken. If a platform pushes devs to resort to such workarounds, it's doomed https://t.co/Ra4CtJo40I
— Mysk 🇨🇦🇩🇪 (@mysk_co) January 15, 2023

On Friday, users began reporting that they were unable to access their accounts on third-party apps like Twitterrific, Tweetbot, and Fenix on both Android and iOS via the microblogging website. Gadgets360 was able to confirm that Twitterific and Tweetbot on iOS and Fenix on Android could not access Twitter.

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Further reading: Twitter, Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Elon Musk

Manas Mitul

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In his time as a journalist, Manas Mitul has written on a wide spectrum of beats including politics, culture and sports. He enjoys reading, walking around in museums and rewatching films. Talk to Manas about football and tennis, but maybe don’t bring up his video game backlog. More