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Twitter's API is down?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Twitter's API is down?

#201

Post by WJW »

mlindner wrote: post #186
samwillis wrote: post #67

It would not surprise me if this is the end of third party clients and the new owner has removed access. Very disappointing if he has, particularly if he's done it with zero notice too. He has been making significant noise of feature changes in the official client coming in the next couple of weeks. Removing the third party client access would align with that, along with removing the little "posted by ..." note on ea…

Why are people jumping to a ridiculous conclusion about the API being removed, especially because it's literally in the middle of the night in California? Like why assume the much more reasonable opinion that it's simply an outage.

Because the API is still up for other apps.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#202

Post by hef19898 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #171
highwaylights wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half an order of magnitude bigger, at most. A regional outage of that size is embarrassing whatever way you slice it. Leaving all that aside, he’s driving a massive subset of his users away at a time when he really needs all the users he can get. You can spin this however you like, this is not a good situation for him. He’s said as much outright and implied it repeatedly. Since this time last year he’s said that both…

> Since this time last year he’s said that both Twitter and SpaceX are likely months from bankruptcy At least in the case of SpaceX the US government will more likely than not step in and nationalize them out of national security requirements.

It always good to have fallback solution, isn't it?

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#203

Post by satvikpendem »

samwillis wrote: post #67

It would not surprise me if this is the end of third party clients and the new owner has removed access. Very disappointing if he has, particularly if he's done it with zero notice too. He has been making significant noise of feature changes in the official client coming in the next couple of weeks. Removing the third party client access would align with that, along with removing the little "posted by ..." note on ea…

That is why companies should always stay vigilant about platform risk. In general, own your platform, don't built your business on someone else's platform, it is too easy for them to deplatform you on their whim.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#204

Post by mrtksn »

Nextgrid wrote: post #197
mrtksn wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anything stops devs from using the Web interface instead of the API? Sure it makes it a bit more challenging because parsing is involved but AFAIK it is completely legal to parse and display HTML output however you want. It's essentially like a browser add-on. I wonder if Twitter can be killed by the "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy? So: 1. Make a client that combines Mastadon/Others and Twitter feeds, mak…

You will have 2 problems with this: 1) the law, at least in the US. Laws such as copyright and maybe even the CFAA have been abused to outlaw adversarial interoperability. You'd need to either practice good opsec and operate anonymously or be based out of reach of US-allied law enforcement. 2) Apple (and maybe Google too?) - they will remove any client for a third-party service unless said client has explicit approva…

Can you elaborate on the first point?

Apple might not be such a big issue because they allow reader apps. I guess they can ban you to improve their relationship with Twitter but you can also throw a subscription service as an IAP to improve your odds :)

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#205

Post by smcl »

mlindner wrote: post #198
smcl wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen a handful of “this is it” comments out of ~180 in total and they were all downvoted to 0 or less. Most of the rest of the comments are people trying to figure out wtf works and doesn’t or people speculating if Twitter are moving to kill off 3rd Party apps (and whether they’d have to move to Twitter mobile web).

Almost every top post is a "this is it" post, along with many of the second level posts on the top posts that aren't.

The top few comments are…

Top: speculating about 3p clients “It would not surprise me if this is the end of third party clients …”

Second: about lack of comms, “Ironically, we can know about this through posts to the FediVerse from the developer of Tweetbot, and ensuing discussion.”

Third: list of banned clients

Fourth: link to API status visualisation

Fifth: your comment

Sixth: someone saying that they don’t want to use Twitters own app so they’ll just quit

are we looking at the same thing?

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#206

Post by satvikpendem »

numpad0 wrote: post #120
SllX wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically I’m having trouble reading this because I’m on my phone and Twitter URLs go to Tweetbot. So I’m guessing that’s on the list.

Twitter allowing ban evasion and discussions about it had been a real clever move IMO. Users make a lot of noises and calls for exodus, none working, because it always happens inside the very platform.

Indeed, never discount network effects. The amount of people that moved to Mastodon (and crucially, have actually continued posting there and haven't moved back) is miniscule compared to Twitter's overall userbase.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#207

Post by samwillis »

Nextgrid wrote: post #199
samwillis wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear that it's not a general API outage, specific "reader" apps have been removed/blocked, including from peoples "authorised apps" in their accounts. This is not an "API Outage", I think we can be 99.9% sure it's a removal of specific apps.

Could it just be an anti-abuse system going wrong, and reader apps are targeted because they exceed some threshold? Even with Musk's antics I don't see what would they gain by blocking API clients without announcing it - it would take Musk 30 seconds to tweet "oh btw third-party clients are done for" and would at least give everyone clarity.

Ok, so you may be right and my estimate of 99.9% is probably over zealous.

But to play devils advocate, say you are thinking of removing third party apps. You want to test the waters and see if users who use them continue to visit at the same rate when forced to use the official client. You schedule a quite "blocking" of the apps for the evening PT, your team can happily sleep through the noise generated and have the data in the morning from Asia/Europe of how people reacted.

In the morning you make the call as to whether to stick with the plan or say it was an errant moderation bot.

That may be to much 4d chess though...

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#208

Post by Hamuko »

mlindner wrote: post #186
samwillis wrote: post #67

It would not surprise me if this is the end of third party clients and the new owner has removed access. Very disappointing if he has, particularly if he's done it with zero notice too. He has been making significant noise of feature changes in the official client coming in the next couple of weeks. Removing the third party client access would align with that, along with removing the little "posted by ..." note on ea…

Why are people jumping to a ridiculous conclusion about the API being removed, especially because it's literally in the middle of the night in California? Like why assume the much more reasonable opinion that it's simply an outage.

API keys are showing up for developers as "suspended".

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#210

Post by smcl »

masklinn wrote: post #194
smcl wrote: post #191

Surely someone at Twitter has to say something official about whats going on here. There’s no way they can continue radio silence.

What was it, “Twitter, which may no longer have a public relations department, did not reply to a request for comments”?

True but they still managed to communicate the new timeline changes somehow. One would hope that someone could at least acknowledge an issue seven hours or so after it’s happened.
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