Twitter officially announced that it would no longer allow third-party developers to make Twitter clients. The prohibition affects all third-party programs that attempt to connect to Twitter, including Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Aviary, Echofon, Birdie, and others.
Officially prohibiting third-party clients from the social network was verified in a change to its developer agreement. Beginning on January 19, 2023, the building of third-party clients for the Twitter platform will be explicitly forbidden by Twitter’s new developer agreement for the usage of the Twitter API.
As part of the new regulations, developers are prohibited from using the API to build “a substitute or equivalent service or product to the Twitter Application.” This decision has been met with backlash from the user base.
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Why Twitter is implementing this
A further provision of the revised regulations states that developers “will not or attempt (and will not enable anyone to) a) reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or translate the Twitter API or otherwise seek to derive source code, trade secrets, or know-how in or underlying any Twitter API…”
The rationale behind Twitter’s sudden shift in policy is not made clear in the new agreement. Perhaps Elon Musk has plans to monetize the site with premium services and advertising.
At a time when Twitter is being attacked from several directions, this choice is unlikely to win back users’ faith. Founder and CEO of Twitterrific, Sean Heber, said the firm was “increasingly capricious” and “no longer recognized as trustworthy…”
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Further Prohibitions On Twitter
Ad companies are leaving Twitter because of its unstable, ever-evolving content standards, increasing the pressure on the company to turn a profit. The company’s worth has dropped by $4.5 billion since Musk purchased it in October 2022, and it now has to pay $300 million in interest on its $12.5 billion in debt.
Twitter is taking significant cost-cutting steps. When a corporation stops paying rent and housekeeping services, some employees may start doing things like bringing in their own tissue paper, as reported by the New York Times. In an effort to save another $500 million, Musk closed a data center and auctioned off office equipment in a “fire sale.”
Twitter’s annual Twitter Blue strategy is an attempt to monetize the service. Earlier this month, it said it might “ease” its restriction on political commercials. This is part of their plan to secure additional money for the 2024 U.S. election campaign. Elon Musk’s suggestion last month in a tweet that Twitter sells identities for income has sparked widespread speculation.