Twitter is going to break core functionality in Tweetbot, Twitteriffic, Talon, Tweetings, and more on June 19th. There’s no announced fix.

Reminder: APIs have terms of service dictated by the company that makes it. It’s Twitter’s right to do this, but it still sucks.

Throwback to my article 2012 (two thousand twelve), when Twitter was beginning to make these API changes. Twitter does not act like a platform. theverge.com/2012/8/23/3262…

From 2012: "Twitter isn’t building a platform business, it’s building a Twitter business. “

Again, from the announced changes in 2012. A char of apps Twitter wants (and doesn’t want, upper right quadrant) "Twitter said that developers 'should not build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.’” theverge.com/2012/8/16/3248…

Lol typo in that last tweet but I’m leaving it because the fact that you also can’t edit tweets on top of all this is just, like, :chef kisses fingers:

The infuriating part of all of this is if Twitter wants to just cut third party apps, it should say so and not hide behind obscure api policy changes.

LOL here's a moment let's see if it gets featured #BreakingMyTwitter

Can users of third party apps even view moments?

I guess it just opens a web view - Sent from Flamingo

I'm already finding myself using twitter less ever since they ditched the official OSX program. The web interface SUCKS and I don't really use my phone when I'm at home. Apparently no sense in getting a 3rd party app now either.

Using their website is punishing, why would they ever want to make anyone do that?

Adverts for revenue?

Yeah, I know, I was being /s, totally on board with revenue, it’s just not a navigation friendly page

I love seeing my webbrowser using 300-500MB of ram with only twitter open /s

No kidding and that’s ANY browser.

...it's an equal oppotunities memory hog ;)

I went for this approach and it's been bearable.. twitter.com/ugmonk/status/…

Why that against Tweetbot or Twitterrific?

Would mean carrying a mac around just to access twitter, it's a very expensive alternative.

(plus, I liked having the same client on windows/mac/android)

also it's entirely self-imposed. If @Twitter's own apps didn't blow so hard, we wouldn't need 3rd party apps in the first place.

But that would mean for them to be transparent.... And we all know how that goes on social media outlets

I think they prefer speaking in Code.

And make and support their own native desktop apps.

They’ve done this since they started having an in-house client team. First it was private APIs and token limits.

...and then they went and killed off the native MacOS client

Among the many reason I love iOS is because it has tweetbot. Twitter is really making is hard to love it.

I only use twitter via Tweetbot. So, I guess with FB dead to me and Twitter pushing me out I am left to IG and…. google+? Path?

Everyone will laugh at me, but all these things happening with these platforms make me think RSS is going to come back in style in some way

They still want/need to 'borrow' innovation from these third party clients, but honestly, between a messy Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram, a largely redundant Facebook (at least for me), social media apps are becoming harder to tolerate and use

Flamingo just disappeared from the Play Store... RIP

I remember when they turned off the feature that allowed you to easily see how many times an article had been shared. No rationale for decision. Didn't build a business of their own around it. Just turned it off. The least innovative innovative company ever (or vice versa).

You want transparency from a social networking app???! How dare you sir!!! Seriously, this pisses me off. I just bought Flamingo ffs

you also experiencing Twitter being down currently? Majority of tweets not showing up etc?

You guys should do a Youtube video highlighting this, lately I feel Twitter is making some bad decisions, dropping support for their Mac app, dropping this critical feature for 3rd Party Twitter apps, and focusing on PWA (the cancer of apps)

cool

But we still can't edit tweet. @MKBHD

the issue though is that Twitter itself doesn’t offer a client with stream updates. You need to click/drag down to refresh the feed, on every supported platform.

I hate the Twitter iOS app experience 🤮🤮 Tweetbot or Twitterrific are so much better.

Twitter is a VC-backed company that became public. So it was always about making money for shareholders, if being a platform no longer helps in pursing this goal, what’s the point of holding to that? Simple as that

If the goal is to grow the user base, this could hurt. If the goal is to increase advertising revenue, it could help, unless they actually LOSE users (highly engaged ones, at that).

Good point

And they just killed the native Mac client 😐

wow, I’m basically not gonna use twitter now…

BINGO

Ok bye

I guess they really wants me to see ads.

They need the revenue to survive, yes.

omfg @TwitterDev come on now my frens let @tweetbot and @Twitterrific keep doing their great job here

If they’re going to have terrible mobile experiences, the least they can do is provide third parties with the tools necessary to fix that. This is carving away at the last vestiges of a once thriving ecosystem.

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Dump twitter and go elsewhere.

Don’t @jack with my beloved @tweetbot ! 😉

Excellent! Given how crappy the @Twitter app I’ll just use it less! It’s not like they need more engaged users or anything 🤷‍♂️

Wow. 😱 @taramann

Yeah. :-(

The end of a great era ☹️

A lot of people who drive a lot of traffic to your platform use third-party apps like Tweetbot, so don’t alienate them like this @TwitterDev

So that push to quit Twitter has arrived for me. #quittwitter

Journalists are going to evaporate from this platform without an ability to enforce the arrow of time.

There's an old adage: People in tech have no idea how the things they create work

I have literally been yelling about this since they announced it last year, yet no one seemed to realise just how bad things will be.

Also worth noting, the Account Activity API won’t fix this either, even if it was widely available - because it won’t support receiving messages about who you follow - only direct @’s to you or messages you send.

And it seems to me that even if Twitter adopted WebSub, it would be rate limited? (disclosure: I'm dumb about WebSub)

Yeh, and every client would need a massive amount of server infrastructure to support that. No way they could do that for a $9.99 one off payment, would have to go subscription models.

Tweetdeck works by polling the timeline API feed every 4 seconds, that makes it appear “streaming” to it’s users - but everyone else is allowed 15 calls to that API per 15 minutes - so max timeline updates of once per minute post June.

“In Case You Missed It"

Twitter could have capitalized on the Facebook debacle, but no, they chose to do a dick move. Not smart.

How ironic, that none of the competitors could harm neither Facebook nor Twitter, but at the end both face troubles because of their own.

What I want to say: users certainly ~will~ complain about this step.

Hey @Twitter @TwitterDev please fix this shit. TweetBot is one of the key reasons I stay with iOS, and I don’t want to hear about your official app, which is nowhere NEAR an adequate substitute.

I just got @tweetbot as I was fed up with the crap that came with the native client and the poor experience on the web app. Every time I use the desktop version I get more rubbish I don't want, I.e likes on the timeline or the random order of tweets. Shame.

I was looking for an excuse to stop using Twitter. Guess this is it.

Push notifications are the reason I open Twitter. Without them, I’ll probably use Twitter less.

Goodbye everyone 👋

Is that why it stopped working recently?

So Tweetdeck will be okay?

In order to force you on to the official app to make it easier to mine data.

Everyone should move to Mastodon!!

And this is so nice after they cancelled the Mac app, and web is unusable. Guess I’ll stop using Twitter soon. @TwitterDev

Time for mobile based RPA. @UiPath @blue_prism - Is it something you’ve considered?

does this affect tweetdeck??????

TweetDeck is Twitter-owned, right? So that won't be affected? (Why do they keep doing this?)

it is, but i don't think they care about maintaining it. they really treat it as an afterthought, it might as well be 3rd party

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

It's also web-based and thus terrible. Proper desktop actual proper actual Windows *program* Tweeten will probably get killed by this too :/

Couldn't this also break older, official Twitter clients that are no longer updated?

3rd party Twitter clients suck anyway

Said no one ever

I had Fenix. I had Flamingo. They look nice but they were always buggy

Hey, Twitter, quietly degrading third-party clients like @tweetbot is only going to push me away from your service, not get me to switch to your awful official app.

’s board of directors need to fire @jack.

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Twitter’s third party timeline: 2012: “we’re basically killing third party apps but not really” 2015: “hey gang jack here! We’re gonna communicate with third parties more” 2018: “we’re kinda killing third party apps”

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Will definitely be taking about this on @CrossedWiresFM

Guess it's almost time to abandon Twitter then. Every time I have to use the official app I remember how utterly awful it is, I'd rather not use Twitter than use their app

I just want a chronological timeline of tweets by accounts that I follow. The official app is a hellhole of "who to follow" and "while you were away" and tweets from 3 hours ago

What are the alternatives?

I guess the concern is that 3rd party devs haven't had the access they need to prep their software, but maybe after the changes roll out they'll be able to retrofit something. Maybe a small gap, then they can catch up? Hopefully at least.

TBH I've been looking for a reason to jump ship anyway, Twitter isn't the fun place it used to be. To many nazis.

soooo many nazis : /

Damn it, one of my applications uses that feature too and heavily relies on it!

Twitter is responsible as anything for the huge boon of innovation in apps on mobile. Because of this 3rd parties have always been my preferred method of using Twitter. If they goes away, so do I. So will countless others. #BreakingMyTwitter

the description only talks about streaming (push) updates, but will client-initiated (polling) updates stop working too?

The biggest software disaster since the greatest invention of the 21st century (iOS) is ahead of us Tweetbot chronofeed completionists. #BreakingMyTwitter Keep on fighting @tweetbot, you rock 🌎!

It certainly seems _inconvenient_, but implying that it's unworkable isn't true. It just means that the apps themselves will be responsible for streaming content to the user as they receive each notice from the web hook.

Instagram also plans on crippling it's API, which will kill a number of third party apps as well. Just got the email the other day. #disappointing

way to continually alienate your users, @jack. Smdh.

Easy fix for me. I will no longer use Twitter if they break all the Twitter apps that make the service not suck. I'm not tied in by any means.

Hey @TwitterDev Please let there be room for alternatives to your native apps - not everyone wants the same, and killing alternative apps forces users elsewhere.

Bruh. I’m not trying to use the twitter app. It’s trash. Why are they doing this. 😡

What a crock of shit

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The official apps/website are crap for the way I use Twitter. Borking 3rd party apps will force one of two scenarios for me.  At best I unfollow half my feed and at worst I use the service less or not at all. Hope they find a better way.

Side note: what if Twitter offered a premium subscription and one of the features was full featured 3rd party apps? Could that work?

Well, if they make 3rd party clients unworkable, that's the end of Twitter for me. I'll be Mastodon-only.

Well, dammit

Damn, I was thinking of switching to Talon. Guess ill wait to see what happens

Does this API change completely break apps like Tweetbot, or just kill off push and background refreshing?

After @facebook scandal, APIs are going to be harder... Corrupt politicians take advantage of these scandals as developers' lives become harder