Twitter finally added new rules to its developer terms that ban third-party apps days after saying they’d always been there.
Days after saying that it had blocked third-party apps as a result of “long-standing API rules,” Twitter has finally gotten around to writing those rules and adding them to its developer terms.
Twitter unceremoniously blocked third-party apps from accessing its API a week ago and said nothing about what was going on, leaving developers and their customers in the dark. Then it said that it was merely applying rules that had long existed, much to everyone’s confusion.
The problem was that there was and never had been a rule that stopped developers from building apps that replicated the Twitter experience off the back of its API. Developers of apps like Tweetbot and Twitterrific pointed that out, asking Twitter to confirm which rules they had supposedly broken. Twitter didn’t respond.
The reason for the silence was because there wasn’t a rule to point to – and it was still writing it.
Engadget reports that the rule now exists after it was snook into the Twitter developer agreement. It reports that the new clause is the only real change to the document, saying that developers can’t “use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.”
That’s confirmation that Twitter doesn’t intend to change course here and the era of third-party apps is finished. That’s a real shame considering the state of the first-party apps and website, all of which have suffered from bugs and outages since new owner and CEO Elon Musk took over the company in late 2022.
Third-party developers are now left to remove their apps from the App Store and Google Play Store – with some hoping that customers don’t request refunds for fear that could put them out of business. Twitterrific’s developers even published a blog post confirming the app has been discontinued, noting the refund issue specifically.
“If you were a subscriber to Twitterrific for iOS, we would ask you to please consider not requesting a refund from Apple, developer Sean Heber writes. “The loss of ongoing, recurring revenue from Twitterrific is already going to hurt our business significantly, and any refunds will come directly out of our pockets – not Twitter’s and not Apple’s.”
Heber makes it clear what refunds could do to the company – “To put it simply, thousands of refunds would be devastating to a small company like ours.”
