Reprinted from TidBITS by permission; reuse governed by Creative Commons
license BY-NC-ND 3.0. TidBITS has offered years of thoughtful commentary
on Apple and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the
entire TidBITS archive, visit http://www.tidbits.com/


   Thwarting Twitter's Upcoming Data Collection

   Josh Centers

   One factor in Twitter's success was the service's early support for
   third-party clients. One app that particularly shaped the course of
   Twitter was [1]Twitterrific for the Mac and iPhone. It was the [2]first
   client to coin the term 'tweet,' the first to use a bird icon, and the
   first to support replies and conversations. Without Twitterrific,
   Twitter arguably wouldn't be the service it is today.

   Unfortunately, Twitterrific's future on the Mac is shaky. While the iOS
   version keeps trucking along, Twitterrific for the Mac hasn't been
   updated in a year, with a promised version 5 in limbo. While the more
   popular iOS app remains on the cutting edge, its Mac counterpart feels
   like a museum piece.

   [3]Mike Beasley of 9to5 Mac talked with Gedeon Maheux of The
   Iconfactory, developers of Twitterrific, to find out what the holdup
   is. While Apple's transition to the iOS 7 design language derailed the
   Mac overhaul, the main reason for the long delay is Twitter's
   now-strict limitations on client developers, which makes investment in
   an updated Mac client a risky business proposition.

   [4]Version 1.1. of the Twitter API, announced on 16 August 2012, placed
   severe limits on user tokens for Twitter clients: 100,000 for new apps,
   and older apps with more than 100,000 users were allowed twice their
   current user bases in tokens. In simple terms, one token is required
   for each user, so limiting the number of tokens allotted to an app
   limits the number of users who can use that app. Twitter mentioned
   allowing more tokens for certain developers, but has so far denied
   extra tokens for any apps that compete with its official clients.

   This is especially frustrating since Twitter doesn't pay a lot of
   attention to its own apps. For example, [5]Twitter's official Mac app
   can't even edit lists or sync timeline positions with its iOS sibling.

   It was originally theorized that Twitter was shutting out third-party
   developers because it wanted to ensure that users were viewing its ads.
   But that never quite made sense to me, since Twitter could have simply
   required developers to include ads in their clients instead of
   introducing draconian user limits.

   But with Twitter's recent announcement of [6]App Graph, another
   explanation for the company's desire to dominate the user experience
   has appeared: Twitter wants to collect personal information from your
   devices. App Graph will use the official Twitter app to gather the list
   of apps installed on your iOS devices and send that list back to
   Twitter. (It seems to do this by scanning a [7]list of x-callback-urls
   ' a method of inter-app communications developed before iOS 8's
   Extensibility functions.)

   Fortunately, it won't (yet) gather any information from the apps
   themselves, and the 'feature' will be easy to disable. The Twitter app
   respects the Limit Ad Tracking setting in Settings > Privacy >
   Advertising, and will not gather app information if that setting is
   enabled.

   You will also be able to disable App Graph inside the Twitter app
   itself:
    1. Tap the Me tab.
    2. Tap the gear icon.
    3. Tap Settings.
    4. Select an account.
    5. Under Privacy, disable 'Tailor Twitter based on my apps.'

   Of course, you could instead uninstall the Twitter app and use an
   alternative, but who knows how long that will be an option.

   It's good that Twitter is letting users opt out of App Graph, but I
   suspect this is just the beginning of Twitter's data-gathering efforts.
   I doubt Twitter would have done so much to anger developers without a
   strong business reason, so it's unlikely that the company will stop
   with the relatively polite App Graph.

   I guess we shouldn't be surprised, since gathering personal information
   seems to be the bread-and-butter business model of social networks. But
   it doesn't seem like Twitter is thinking long-term here. Third-party
   developers have continually advanced Twitter's service, and one of the
   draws of Twitter has been as a sort of anti-Facebook. I'm unconvinced
   that trying to become more like Facebook will provide the effect
   Twitter wants.

   Twitter, of course, needs to generate revenue to stay in business, and
   I have no problem with that. After all, I want the service to stay
   around. But I also want to be able to use my own choice of client. I
   find Twitter's official offerings to be mediocre, and Twitter was
   incomprehensible to me until I discovered the [8]Tweetbot apps. Without
   them, I might use Twitter significantly less.

   Then again, maybe I'm not the sort of user Twitter is seeking.

References

   1. http://twitterrific.com/ios
   2. http://furbo.org/2011/03/11/twitterrific-firsts/
   3. http://9to5mac.com/2014/11/25/twitterrific-5-twitters-war-on-developers/
   4. https://blog.twitter.com/2012/changes-coming-to-twitter-api
   5. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitter/id409789998?mt=12&at=10l5PW
   6. https://support.twitter.com/articles/20172069
   7. https://gist.github.com/genadyo/295a5e8f0d743f57137f
   8. http://tapbots.com/software/tweetbot/

.