Twitter Updates Developer's Regulations That Prohibited Third Party Bilipticals, Without Clear Notifications

JAKARTA - Twitter has updated its developer rules that prohibit third-party clients. This comes nearly a week after unofficially blocking app access to its platform. They also barely provide an explanation of what was going on against the previous chaos.

The new rules state that users cannot use API or Twitter content to make or try to create a replacement or similar service or product for Twitter Apps.

The rules, updated on Thursday, January 19, make clear the meaning: " Twitter app" refers to "products, services, applications, websites, web pages, platforms, and other offerings facing consumers, including without restrictions, offered via https://twitter.com and Twitter mobile apps.

According to Wayback Machine, the clause that prohibits this alternative service is added to the rules with the latest updates.

The rule changes came after Twitter quietly damaged several popular third-party Twitter clients such as Tweetbot and Twitterific from January 12. At the time, developers behind the app, many of whom have historically shaped Twitter's entire user experience, saying that they did not receive any communication from the platform about what was going on.

Then, on January 17, the company's developer accounts tweeted that they "enforced the old API rules", which could cause some apps to malfunction.

The statement was not received positively. Some commentators and developers pointed out a lack of clarity about what rules were actually violated and the fact that the app had been running for years before Elon Musk bought Twitter and began supporting plans to turn it into "all apps".

In 2021, Twitter's former developer platform leader, Amir Shevat, told The Verge that the company is specifically trying to make it easier for developers to compete with Twitter's first-party apps with recent regulatory changes.

We have respected their API rules, as published, over the past 16 years, wrote Ged Maheux, co-founder of Twitterific developer The Iconfactory, in a blog post about inactive applications. We don't know that these regulations have changed recently or what changes might happen."

Craig Hockenberry, principal at Iconfactory, bluntly said on his personal blog: There was no prior notification for the creator, the customer just got a strange mistake, and no one explained what happened. We have no chance to thank the customers who have been with us for more than a decade. On the other hand, it's just another scene in their ongoing impurity show.

Uang kemungkinan merupakan salah satu alasan di balik perubahan aturan dan larangan kliet pihak ketiga. Twitter telah berjuang secara finansial sejak Musk mengambil alih platform media sosial itu, yang membatankannya dengan utang miliar, dan klie pihak ketiga kemungkinan mendapatkan uang lebih banyak daripada pihak pertama.

While some developers paid Twitter to access the API, the company did not show ads through it, which reduced its ability to monetize people using alternative apps. This does not help that people using third-party clients may not be so interested in Twitter Blue subscription services, which mainly adds features to official Twitter apps.

There has been no official announcement regarding the change in rules, either from Twitter Dev or Elon Musk. Twitter does not have a communication department to contact.