Where does it say that goes against their terms of service? I can’t see anything that would preclude Twitter from just plugging in the API and using it directly
I'm pretty sure this sort of legalese is required for them to be able to offer an API that third-party clients can use. Otherwise, Twitterific, TweetDeck, etc. would all be committing massive copyright infringement everytime they displayed a tweet.
Honestly, Twitter has even banned games I've written that let users easily tweet their scores. Bans claimed they were clients. So don't think they are being particularly fair or accepting around their TOS. It's more like they sick robot banning algorithms on anything that moves.
Amusingly, I've seen several big apps drop the Twitter API in favor of just asking the user for their username and password and pretending to be browsers. This is pretty much the only way around issues like where popular apps run out of login tokens that are now limited by the API. Terrible for users of course because they have to give out their password, but better than no Twitter integration at all.
So Twitter's API is basically so bad now that client apps are better off pretending they are web browsers.
Twitter's API is notoriously bad for 3rd party apps.[0] In order to use the standard API, you need to register for a developer account, which requires manual approval and which Twitter can deny for any reason.[1]
Facebook has a history of outright suing 3rd party apps.[2]
If I can log into Twitter, I should also be able to update my account with an HTTP request. That's it. I shouldn't need to sign an agreement, or tell them why I'm programmatically accessing my account, or dig into a settings page. I should be able to grant an OAUTH permission to anyone that gives them access to that API, and Facebook shouldn't be able to sue that person just because they got around an IP block. That should just be part of my account.
I don't know if this legislation guarantees that (the article doesn't link to the text of the bill). Most tech legislation is bad, so there's a good chance it doesn't. But the principle remains.
Twitter is a public company owned by shareholders, running a private service on their own servers. They have a right to try and control how their service is used by users and developers. If Twitter tells me I can't access their API, I probably won't develop that client not because I technically cant but because it would be an uphill battle to develop and put something out there if it depends on someones third party servers and that person does not want me to use said servers.
I’m not on Twitter, but I can think a myriad of cases where I wouldn’t want to touch the API without my case being malicious. Like extracting data from the platform, or monitor specific accounts, or monitor trends, or whatever. It doesn’t have to necessarily be a troll farm, or a fake users service. I’m sure the API allows most, if not all of these, but there would be usage quota. You bypass it, and then you can even start a business around it. There are thousands of startups out there providing services for social media monitoring, and I seriously doubt all of them are going through the official API.
Welcome to the world of third-party Twitter clients. Not content with screwing over businesses relying on Twitter's API, it seems, they have now set out to screw over any company relying on any other third-party API as well.
Twitter does sublicense, otherwise it would be impossible to use their API. I've looked at the developer agreement, and didn't see anything that would make these services against the rules.
There is a point where third party clients are going to have to demonstrate that they are not required to go through Twitter to get access to it. Just as third-party IM clients long thrived without official access (and in the face of attempts to block them), and are now commonplace and tolerated, Twitter clients can (probably legally) switch to an API key borrowed from Twitter and be no worse off. Even though Twitter's actions aren't catastrophic for third party clients yet, the fact that nobody has used this approach is putting Twitter in a stronger position than they deserve.
Twitter didn’t have a first party client for years, the clients banned Friday are those that came first.
Core features and the name of those features Twitter has today came from third party apps.
Twitter forces third party clients to pay them money to use the new API which is needed for them to function as full clients but the new API is worse than the old one which was free to use.
Twitter chooses not to show ads for third party clients.
reply