Oof.
Twitter has updated its developer agreement to confirm it has banned third-party apps.
As noticed by Engadget, Twitter’s developer agreement was today updated with a clause that banned “use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.”
The acknowledgement comes one week after popular third-party clients like Tweetbot and Fenix for Android were rendered inoperable.
“Fenix for Android suspended, no communication whatsoever from Twitter,” wrote Fenix’s developer Matteo Villa on 13 January. “Probably an automated action, but I doubt very much I’ll heard from them again and be able to resolve the issue.”
Villa pulled Fenix from the Google Play Store that same day; the iOS version of the app currently is functioning as expected.
Tweetbot attempted API key changes during this past week with limited success, but ultimately became unusable once more. The app’s developers have announced that they will focus on a Mastodon client instead.
Twitterific has also been discontinued, its developer has confirmed.
“We are sorry to say that the app’s sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter – a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer,” wrote Twitterific’s Sean Heber.
The change comes after what amounted to a week of silence from the social media platform — in part, because Twitter no longer has a communications team.
“Twitter is enforcing its long-standing API rules,” Twitter’s developer account said, simply earlier in the week. “That may result in some apps not working.”
Will you continue to use Twitter on your smartphone using Twitter’s first-party app? Why or why not?
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