The "platform" that Twitter is restricting access to is a website, with a bunch of content put on it by users of that website. IANAL, but I don't see what rights to that data could possibly be claimed by a third party.
This is Twitter recognizing that their content creators have power, and wanting to keep them on the platform.
Twitter has no interest in hosting only the free teaser content of someone's patron-only feed.
My bet is on some kind of client/marketing platform that all these accounts gave write permission to.
Edit: I stand corrected, many other comments mention that the offending tweets appear to be posted from the web app, so this suggests an issue within Twitter itself.
I'm gonna guess it often isn't even their content but is user content they are protecting. So, sounds like a big subsidy/protection racket for Twitter or whatever to train on their users' public content but not let others.
> Twitter is one of the last ones that allow their content to be freely shared but the char limit is a pretty significant limit and even that has popups.
I do not believe this to be the case. If not logged in, it will lock the screen and block you reading after a few entries. That's not "free".
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.
Having access to some is not the same as having access to all. Rate limiting , or restricting to ones I am managing and approval processes are pretty easy . It does not like Twitter is doing any of that .
Twitter is publishing everything any person tweets. Those 2 comments are nothing compared to the power of selectively blocking/publishing users tweets (which communication companies are not allowed to do), but at the same time not be responsible for copyright violations (which other types of media companies are).
Umm, can't just Twitter disallow this in their EULA and delete all users who engage in this behavior? Besides, doesn't Twitter have some kind of intellectual ownership of tweets posted there, so a competitor can't just scrape the site and display the results as their own?
This is no doubt the outcry they are hoping for, with the intent being to open it up fully to everyone qualified to be a Twitter user. The exclusivity is just to build hype and cachet for PR purposes.
They, like every other community site, have a ToS that grants them rights to publish and sublicense user submitted content. They couldn't function without it, when you view a twitter feed with your browser and see sponsored trending topics, they're "selling" content:
> You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).
It'd be the same as a web host prohibiting certain browsers, or trying to block you from publishing RSS.
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