They're using iOS's built-in Twitter functionality, which I believe Twitter sees as simply coming from iOS. Twitter might possibly have a way to block this stuff, but I don't believe it shows up as a separate authorized app for the users to deny.
Neither of the apps got pulled. They got a warning. Whether the guidelines they were supposedly breaking were fair (or even existed) is a different thing.
I wonder what is Twitter stance on this, as a company. Do they allow it because it's technically speaking not illegal, or do they ban it if they find it because it's questionable at best?
This is a really crappy way for Twitter to have handled this as far as their users are concerned. Somebody over at reddit posted a screencap of an email that Twitter's apparently sending out to users of these apps, and it largely screamed of FUD to me:
There are also indications that it's not just UberTwitter and Twidroyd, but all of UberMedia's apps that have been blocked. Almost makes me think that the FUD aspect may have been intended.
EDIT:
Looks like at least some of their properties, like EchoFon have survived.
I still don't like Twitter hanging end users out to dry like this, though.
Twitter is probably big enough that more Apple users would complain if Apple enforced such a hardline policy, and has a pre-existing relationship with apple (If I recall correctly, Twitter and Facebook were the first two share with opitons on iOS), so Apple is more likely to forward on complaints than nuke them? Twitter also requires more personal data (e.g. phone numbers for new accounts), so that may discourage users from posting illegal content in the first place.
I wonder if they are going to clarify what rules the affected apps supposedly broke, but I'm not holding my breath. And there's of course the obvious question as to why no warning was given, if Twitter was suddenly going to start enforcing rules that they had seemingly been ignored for a long time, which to me seems like an obvious thing to do.
Has this actually happened, or is just another attention-seeking rumor being misrepresented as fact?
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