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by HunchedOver 1248 days ago
How many is "many"? Looks like the only affected apps were those which provided a different means to access Twitter without ads. This feels like a storm in a teacup with the majority of developers on the API being unaffected.
6 comments
alkonaut 1248 days ago
> Looks like the only affected apps were those which provided a different means to access Twitter without ads.

I'd be happy to pay some sort of subscription to the API in order to keep using the third party client. Not sure why this isn't a thing. I'd much rather pay a fe bucks per month for API access than "Twitter Blue" or whatever.

As for the apps: while it's an asshat move, I'd be really careful about building anything commercial on top of anyone else's project without any guarantees about the service even existing tomorrow.

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pjc50 1248 days ago
It's not actually possible to serve twitter ads from an API client.
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Hamuko 1248 days ago
There are at least 28 known apps that were banned without any reason or explanation.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1O27Co27g2fWRon7g...

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rtpg 1248 days ago
While I do agree that Twitter was pretty exceptional in allowing these clients to exist, as usual it’s about just doing it silently and not giving any rationale. At least have the courage to admit what you’ve done!
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blacklight 1248 days ago
> the only affected apps were those which provided a different means to access Twitter without ads

Isn't that the whole purpose of an API to send and retrieve content without ads - or any other presentation-layer addition?

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Hamuko 1248 days ago
It's definitely the purpose of the Twitter API because it does not serve ads when you fetch the timeline.
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TillE 1248 days ago
While that's clearly the right choice for professional social media manager type apps which might pay some monthly fee, it's very strange that in so many years they've never created two tiers of API feeds, with an ad-filled one for normal third party apps.
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kryptiskt 1248 days ago
It affected the most popular apps, and it was done without any warning or even communication after the fact. Storm in a teacup? It shows what anybody using the API will have to put up with going forward.
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