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Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

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Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#131

Post by rtkwe »

system16 wrote: post #46

Another short-sighted and bizarre move by a bizarre. fragile, little man. The number of users on third-party clients could not have been significant enough to justify this. At very least, the developers could have been given some notice or an ounce of respect about API access being phased out. Not to mention third-party client users are mostly power users who are responsible for a lot of the content on Twitter that t…

Giving people time would have given time for pressure to actually change the outcome on top of actually requiring planning which doesn't seem to be Musk's forte when it comes to Twitter decisions. The bid more and more seems to have been weird tech bro shitposting that somehow ended in him signing a hilariously one sided contract that's come to this.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#132

Post by Finnucane »

jmann99999 wrote: post #31

I just don't see the replacement for Twitter as Mastodon -- which it seems the Tweetbot people are targeting. Twitter will likely file for bankruptcy later this year due to the debt burden. However, the replacement for Twitter won't be a Twitter "clone." Things will move on. I'm not smart enough to know what people will move on to... But they will move on.

It may very well be that there is not a single 'replacement' for Twitter. One might argue that this is actually a good thing. Monolithic services pretending to be some kind of 'public' space is a lie.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#133

Post by masklinn »

kemayo wrote: post #48

Speaking as someone who had mostly been using the first party twitter app in recent years and so wouldn't have been impacted by this even if I was still actively using twitter, this seems pretty poorly done by Musk. Shutting down third party clients? It's arguably a valid decision. They presumably want to consolidate the users into directly controlled clients, where they can be advertised to and can have premium subs…

> and can have premium subscription features prominently featured. The former could have been rolled into the API, but the latter would have been basically impossible.

Not so, clients have exclusive keys (whose supply has been highly restricted since they were introduced a few years ago, making gaining any sort of grounds with new clients a challenge).

Twitter could have made the validity of these certs / keys conditional on subscription integration.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#134

Post by riazrizvi »

ericmay wrote: post #76
barnabee wrote: post #47

I don't think they realise the damage this change has done. I have been on board with or ambivalent about most of the changes. I don't care if there's less moderation, I think Twitter probably did have too many employees, and I like the idea of a paid account with fewer (preferably no) ads. I'd even have happily paid Twitter to continue using Tweetbot. But this has destroyed the trust and the user experience of many…

What's the saying? First they came for the moderation, but I didn't care because they weren't moderating me. Then they fired employees so as to not have to pay severance or whatever but I didn't care because I don't work at Twitter. Then they came for the API and there was noone left to speak for me... Twitter and Elon have already done quite a bit of damage to the company, platform, and reputation. This is just a co…

This feels like the same thing with Gawker and the HBO show Silicon Valley.

It feels like people with money are shutting down, neutering, avenues where they receive criticism.

Since much of the money for the buyout came from the Saudis and the Chinese, it feels like the people behind this are more concerned with subduing Twitter than turning a profit. Maybe why they had to make it private, it’s illegal to run a public company into the ground.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#135

Post by NavinF »

wstuartcl wrote: post #49
teach wrote: post #14

I have an old friend who is blind. The official Twitter client is a LOT less accessible than the one she was using. This change impacts her ability to use Twitter considerably. And before you start with the "well, she's probably better off" -- she lives in a small rural town. Twitter and Facebook and the like are one of her few connections to a larger world.

The fact that Elon has disbanded the accessibility team at twitter probably already leads them into hot water related to this (It is not uncommon for orgs like twitter to be bound by multiple long term settlements related to accessibility suits that each have obligations of certain deliverables in this area. If your friend truly does have issues navigating the site perhaps she may want to look to a legal remedy -- fr…

Has a social media site ever been forced to accommodate blind people? Serious question.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#136

Post by ceejayoz »

CharlesW wrote: post #123
ceejayoz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're unaffected; the ban is specific to replicating the Twitter.com / first-party app experience. Exact wording: "a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications".

> They're unaffected… This seems plausible, but has there been any official confirmation? If I'm Elon, my next act of ecosystem warfare is to monetize remaining API use cases to within an inch of their life.

My work involves using those APIs; our keys are still active. We'd rapidly hear if entire apps like Salesforce had lost their access as part of this, too.

The new wording in the terms forbids "use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications".

If I had a Tweetdeck competitor I'd not be investing too much into it, and I think anyone working with the APIs now has to do a bit of "is it worth the risk?" calculus, but at the moment there's no sign this goes beyond third-party clients to consume/post timeline stuff.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#137

Post by barnabee »

98codes wrote: post #81
barnabee wrote: post #47

I don't think they realise the damage this change has done. I have been on board with or ambivalent about most of the changes. I don't care if there's less moderation, I think Twitter probably did have too many employees, and I like the idea of a paid account with fewer (preferably no) ads. I'd even have happily paid Twitter to continue using Tweetbot. But this has destroyed the trust and the user experience of many…

> I'd even have happily paid Twitter to continue using Tweetbot. I had thought since they first started locking down 3rd party apps years ago that if/when they ever had a "Twitter Pro" or whatever, that allowing subscribed users to use a third party app would be part of it. After all, lots of online service subs eliminate ads in the product, so why not Twitter? I assumed rational thinking on their part, I suppose.

Yeah, that would have been so incredibly obvious that this whole episode is surely final and clinching proof to anyone still on the fence that he doesn't have a clue what he's doing.

Pitiful.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#138

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

gfodor wrote: post #101
MBCook wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Starting Feb 1st using a third part client will require Twitter Blue.” That’s all it would have taken. Probably would have made a huge increase in subscribers too. This is 100% a control move. He wants full control over how everyone experiences Twitter (not sure why). So this was pulled. Of course you can NEVER go back from this move.

I think that is right. A public API radically slows down product iteration since each feature needs to be considered in terms of its blast radius to third party clients. It probably burned the bridge for good this time, but killing the API to speed up product velocity isn’t an insane move if you value that more than the existing 3rd party ecosystem.

This could’ve been communicated

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#139

Post by Finnucane »

_justinfunk wrote: post #104

> On January 12th, 2023, without warning, Elon Musk ordered his employees at Twitter to suspend access to 3rd party clients which instantly locked out hundreds of thousands of users from accessing Twitter from their favorite clients. Is the claim that 'Elon ordered his employees" in evidence? I haven't seen Elon say he made the decision or try to explain it. I'm not defending Elon, just can't find the source.

No, people are probably just assuming because Musk is famously a micromanager, and it doesn't appear there are a lot of other people at twitter making decisions.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#140

Post by fencepost »

haidev wrote: post #21

Won't this hurt Elon in the long run? I was never able to stand the official Twitter app it's filled with ads and irrelevant clutter. I think since moving to Android Tweetbot is one of the few apps I miss from having on my phone. I was still enjoying the Mac version. I guess I will stick to Nitter [0] from now on. [0] - https://nitter.net/

Won't this hurt Elon in the long run?

Maybe, but compared to the rest of the damage he's done to his brand this is a relatively tiny droplet. This may drive away power users (or drive them to a Twitter-owned option?), but many of them are probably already looking at how much priority they should keep on Twitter. Twitter client issues for many may be a second place to Twitter content issues as a driving factor.

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