[HN Gopher] Twitterrific has been discontinued
___________________________________________________________________
Twitterrific has been discontinued
Author : erickhill
Score : 197 points
Date : 2023-01-19 21:15 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.iconfactory.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.iconfactory.com)
| coldcode wrote:
| To be honest, I expect Elon and Twitter will be discontinued at
| some point, without any good feelings and thanks on the part of
| any of their customers, unlike the app developers Twitter just
| killed.
|
| What is needed is to do Twitter again, in some way that is more
| open and supportive of client apps, but still has the immediacy
| and global search that Twitter has. Mastodon has its uses, but it
| isn't a real replacement. Twitter was always a terrible business,
| but an incredibly useful idea. The idea needs to exist.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Any centralized, VC-backed service like Twitter is going to
| want to control the client UX.
|
| Seems like what you should be asking for is Mastodon, but with
| performance improvements and improved search.
| yokoprime wrote:
| Wonder if they will use some of the IP they've built up to move
| into the Mastodon Client space. While there is already a nice
| crop of Mastodon clients, it seems like there is no dominant 3rd
| party client yet.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| That is exactly what Tapbots has done with Ivory - Taking
| Tweetbot and using that as the basis for a Mastodon client.
| I've been using it for the past few weeks and it's fantastic
| https://tapbots.com/ivory
| josh64 wrote:
| Honest question - I've been using Ivory for the past week but
| it doesn't seem to do anything that Metatext or the Mastodon
| app didn't already do. What's so fantastic about Ivory? I
| feel like I'm missing something because everyone speaks so
| highly of Ivory.
|
| Thanks!
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I haven't used those apps, but I figure it doesn't do
| anything those apps don't do.
|
| I just prefer Ivory's UI. For me, it's a nicer app to use.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| In my case, I've got years worth of Tweetbot muscle memory.
| Using different clients is... a little rough right now.
| riwsky wrote:
| is sad to see it go
| baxtr wrote:
| This is absolutely humiliating for these 3rd party people.
| Twitter shows no respect whatsoever for these devs.
|
| You wanna shut them down to show more ads? Fine. But at least
| communicate and let them know upfront. What a sh*t show.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > Twitter shows no respect whatsoever for these devs.
|
| Or for the users of those apps.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Or the workers
| tazjin wrote:
| There's probably a distorted view there where the percentage
| of overall users using third-party clients is absolutely
| minuscule, but if you look at the percentage of content
| _creators_ it's much larger. At least I remember reading it
| was like that around the time that I stopped using Twitter a
| few years ago.
| TillE wrote:
| Pretty much everyone who does this stuff for a job (social
| media managers, etc) is using third-party clients.
| roydivision wrote:
| It's not 'Twitter' showing no respect. Let's stop beating
| around the bush, it's one person.
| themitigating wrote:
| You mean Elon Musk
| madeofpalk wrote:
| It's hard to overstate how much of an impact third party twitter
| clients have had on Twitter and the broader mobile landscape -
| like the post mentions, the word 'Tweet' and blue bird twitter
| icon came from third party clients! The Tweetie app invented
| pull-to-refresh, used by every (both) mobile operating systems.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup!
|
| Also hard to overstate the impact the new ownership has had,
| such that their assessment is now:
|
| >>"...an increasingly capricious Twitter - a Twitter that we no
| longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any
| longer."
|
| This, from people that partnered with Twitter for a decade++
|
| The new owner had a lot of us, me included, fooled into
| thinking he was intelligent and trustworthy. Now, it is obvious
| he's neither.
|
| Wealth reveals character, and it is sad to see that that
| character is so rotten.
| masklinn wrote:
| Yeah original twitter allowed an explosion of creativity (both
| in style and interaction) around clients, due to its simple
| data and interaction model.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Tweetie even got bought and turned into the official client.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| TweetDeck too as the official power-user web-client.
|
| At the time I thought of building a client but the dependence
| on Twitter seemed like a huge risk. More fool me though given
| that those companies were taken over for a decent amount.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > 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.
|
| They just documented it. Another after-the-fact policy like
| @elonjet got.
|
| https://www.engadget.com/twitter-new-developer-terms-ban-thi...
|
| "The 'restrictions' section of Twitter's developer agreement was
| updated Thursday with a clause banning 'use or access the
| Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or
| similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.' The
| addition is the only substantive change to the 5,000-word
| agreement."
|
| Anyone with a shred of empathy would've given devs advance notice
| of "we're destroying your business".
| pessimizer wrote:
| > What Sarver said to developers today was direct: If you don't
| want to get burned, don't build pure-play Twitter clients. And
| if your app displays and sends tweets, make sure it looks and
| feels like Twitter.
|
| > "Developers ask us if they should build client apps that
| mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client
| experience," he wrote.
|
| > "The answer is no."
|
| _Twitter to Devs: Don 't Make Twitter Clients... Or Else_
| [2011]
|
| https://mashable.com/archive/twitter-api-clients
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That was never a _rule_ , and they removed the last vestiges
| of the guideline entirely a couple years ago.
|
| https://www.engadget.com/twitter-new-developer-terms-ban-
| thi...
|
| > In fact, Twitter previously changed its developer policies
| in 2021 to remove a section that discouraged -- but didn't
| prohibit -- app makers from "replicating" its core service.
| The change was part of a broader shift by Twitter to improve
| its relationship with developers, including the makers of
| third-party clients.
|
| The guidelines they introduced in 2011:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20211105230857/https://developer.
| ..
|
| See the section titled "If you create a service that
| replicates Twitter's core experience or features you will be
| subject to additional rules beyond what is already included
| in the Developer Policy."
|
| It very clearly _permits_ clients like Tweetbot and
| Twitteriffic. It only applies additional conditions to them,
| which they 've entirely complied with.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Everything you're saying is absolutely true. The idea that
| cutting off third-party clients is something radical or
| something twitter didn't desire to do a long time ago is
| laughable.
|
| All of the people gloating about how much Musk overpaid
| when he was forced to buy their favorite thing should have
| expected that as a result he'd have to do anything to
| squeeze revenue out of it.
|
| > That was never a rule, and they removed the last vestiges
| of the guideline entirely a couple years ago.
|
| I wasn't aware that traces of this _guideline_ lasted until
| just a couple of years ago.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The idea that cutting off third-party clients is
| something radical or something twitter didn't desire to
| do a long time ago is laughable.
|
| It's not at all radical, and if it'd been done with a
| month's warning, I think there'd have been grumbling but
| that'd be about it.
|
| Destroying a number of small businesses _without warning_
| (and letting them swing in the wind for a week waiting
| for a "why", and lying about them breaking "long-
| standing" rules) in this nature was entirely unnecessary,
| and is what has generated the backlash.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Absolutely agree. It's chaotic, but the reason Musk owns
| all of these big companies was because of luck and
| financial prowess, not any talent for management.
| minimaxir wrote:
| "long-standing API rules" indeed.
| TillE wrote:
| It's notable how that statement was just an absolute,
| unequivocal lie.
|
| Most companies don't do that!
|
| https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1615405842735714304
| minimaxir wrote:
| There is a conspiracy theory that Elon himself wrote that
| tweet, which IMO tracks.
| rideontime wrote:
| It's hardly a conspiracy theory considering he boasted
| about writing the "This account may or may not be
| notable" text for the "legacy" (real) verification
| checks.
| clouddrover wrote:
| Here's what Musk said about Twitter an hour ago
| (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1616179085507702785):
|
| > _" Twitter is arguably already the least wrong source of
| truth on the Internet, but we obviously still have a long
| way to go._
|
| > _Enabling @CommunityNotes to operate at very large scale
| and providing maximum transparency about how Twitter works
| are fundamental to building trust. "_
|
| It's maximum shamelessness.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Let's hope Twitter puts the time machine up for auction
| (https://www.npr.org/2023/01/18/1149731084/twitter-office-
| sup...) someday.
| [deleted]
| culi wrote:
| > Since 2007, Twitterrific helped define the shape of the Twitter
| experience. It was the first desktop client, the first mobile
| client, one of the very first apps in the App Store, an Apple
| Design award winner, and it even helped redefine the word "tweet"
| in the dictionary. Ollie, Twitterrific's bluebird mascot, was so
| popular it even prompted Twitter themselves to later adopt a
| bluebird logo of their very own. Our little app made a big dent
| on the world!
|
| Wow they really helped make Twitter what it is today
| [deleted]
| binkHN wrote:
| What are the chances Reddit goes down this path and kills the
| many amazing third-party clients? I absolutely love the one I use
| and detest the official Reddit app.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Given the amount of users that use and evangelize Apollo for
| iOS (including myself), that might hurt Reddit more than the
| loss of third-party apps for Twitter.
| buildbot wrote:
| Yeah the day Apollo is disabled is the day I stop using
| reddit basically... It's so good using anything else is
| annoying.
|
| Before Apollo, only Baconreader came close.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Not much. No one cares about Reddit that much, it doesn't have
| the ridiculous level of venture capital attached that forces
| leadership to short-term benefits only, and most importantly:
| Reddit caves when the mods of major subs do collective action.
| Twitter and FB have in house moderation, whereas Reddit is
| completely at the mercy of the volunteer mods.
| donio wrote:
| Reddit has learned a lasting lesson from Digg's self-destruct,
| that's why old.reddit.com is still around too. It's been over a
| decade so they might be starting to forget but perhaps the
| Twitter meltdown will be a good refresher. Don't piss off your
| core userbase.
| perardi wrote:
| Twitterrific, and a lot of these early iOS clients, really helped
| defined the Twitter service, and even more so, our interface
| idioms for mobile apps.
|
| Right from the bird's mouth, which by the way, they created, not
| Twitter...
|
| _"Since 2007, Twitterrific helped define the shape of the
| Twitter experience. It was the first desktop client, the first
| mobile client, one of the very first apps in the App Store, an
| Apple Design award winner, and it even helped redefine the word
| "tweet" in the dictionary. Ollie, Twitterrific's bluebird mascot,
| was so popular it even prompted Twitter themselves to later adopt
| a bluebird logo of their very own. Our little app made a big dent
| on the world!"_
|
| And "pull-to-refresh"? Tweetie.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull-to-refresh
| selykg wrote:
| Tweetie was a great app. That was the last time I was really
| actually "interested" in Twitter. It was all sort of downhill
| for me. But I remember pull to refresh being an absolutely mind
| bending feature at the time. It just felt natural.
| mistersquid wrote:
| This is a stretch, but I wonder if Twitter is open to liability
| for summarily shutting down its third-party API access.
|
| Is there any potential upside to suing?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'm quite certain the developer agreement has a "can be revoked
| at any time, for any reason" clause.
|
| edit:
|
| > Twitter may immediately terminate or suspend this Agreement,
| any rights granted herein, and/or your license to the Licensed
| Materials, at its sole discretion at any time, for any reason
| by providing notice to you.
|
| Only possible wiggle room is they didn't do the "providing
| notice" bit.
| klelatti wrote:
| It's obviously bad business (for Twitter given the cost /
| benefit) and show's Elon's lack of empathy but also demonstrates
| the perils of having a user like him run the show.
|
| He literally couldn't care about anything that doesn't affect his
| own experience of the product. Features, clients, parts of the
| world, even users - if Elon isn't interested then it will
| probably go or be ignored.
| samwillis wrote:
| There was a quite moving exchange between Twitterrific and a
| customer earlier:
|
| > Customer: _This makes me so sad. Your iPhone app allowed me as
| a blind person to use Twitter so much better than the app that
| they themselves produce. Sorry for the hostility you are
| receiving from them, but know that you are appreciated for the
| hard work you've done._
|
| > Twitterrific: _Maybe the best thing anyone 's ever told us.
| Thank you for this, truly. It is everything. Please take care._
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/RustyHilliard77/status/1616174474...
| paxys wrote:
| Considering Musk fired all the engineers working on
| accessibility, I don't expect the official app to improve for
| the better anytime soon.
| barbazoo wrote:
| That's heartbreaking
| wlesieutre wrote:
| And somehow I don't think accessibility in the official Twitter
| app is about to get any better, having fired their
| accessibility team
|
| https://twitter.com/owswills/status/1588625105101664256
| pavlov wrote:
| The problem facing Twitter 2.0 is that Musk is personally
| driving product development and he has essentially no empathy
| for users.
|
| Can you blame him? He hasn't needed it until now. His companies
| either specialize in binary-outcome engineering challenges
| (rocket flies/explodes) or products where Musk himself is the
| user, like a kid designing his own toys (and calling them
| "S/3/X/Y"). Turns out that a lot of people want to drive the
| car that he wants to drive himself, so he probably thinks this
| impeccable taste applies to any kind of product.
|
| But Twitter, unlike a car, is used by hundreds of millions of
| people in thousands of completely different ways. He has no
| idea of what the experience is like for someone with only a
| handful of followers, or blind, or trans, or Algerian, or
| retired, a teenage girl, a suicidal anorexic, etc. etc. -- and
| he doesn't seem at all interested in trying to understand.
| tomcam wrote:
| > he has essentially no empathy for users
|
| Mindreading much?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| More like reading the room.
| WarChortle wrote:
| I don't think he is mindreading, just forming an opinion
| based on Elon's actions recently.
| d23 wrote:
| > Can you blame him?
|
| Yes, chiefly so.
| hourago wrote:
| A company with thousands of employees and the CEO is
| micromanaging developers.
|
| I do not think that the problem is empathy.
|
| It's about not understanding his role in the company. It's
| about not understanding collaboration, team work or
| leadership.
|
| He does lack empathy, thou.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I think these things you list, are what empathy is used
| for. (Among others.)
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Yes, I can blame him.
|
| It was reasonably obvious to other people - those who have
| and have not ran a rocket company - that running Twitter is
| different to running Tesla.
|
| If you're blindsided by your own ego, it's your fault and
| you're to blame.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It really is huge for people that need it, we should all try to
| remember this. When you include accessibility you're opening up
| a door for people who are _constantly_ walking into doors they
| can 't open.
| nickcw wrote:
| Why has Twitter shut down the API?
|
| Is it because third party clients don't show adverts and it is
| feeling the pinch?
|
| Or for some other reason?
| pvg wrote:
| [flagged]
| rideontime wrote:
| a couple of days ago? it says "one hour ago"... wait, this is a
| link to the page we're on.
| pvg wrote:
| I mispasted the link heh:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34393485
| jiripospisil wrote:
| If the issue is that 3rd party clients don't show ads, why not
| just require them to do so? Surely that's a better alternative
| than shutting them down completely.
| _justinfunk wrote:
| Are there any open-source options where I can have a non-
| algorithmic timeline with my own API key?
| skrause wrote:
| Mastodon.
| unpopularopp wrote:
| Well you can get the linear non-algorithmic timeline in the
| official mobile app, works perfectly for the time being
| lukaszkorecki wrote:
| It's almost acceptable, except that there's no timeline sync
| between clients - personally for me it's a pretty big
| dealbreaker
| MBCook wrote:
| On the web too. Plus you can use extensions to block ads,
| promoted junk, suggestions on who to follow, etc.
|
| But none of it holds a candle to TweetBot or Twitterific.
| mjmsmith wrote:
| If you're on iOS/macOS, the developer of Tweaks for Twitter
| [1] has been keeping up with recent downgrades to the web
| UI. The version released today will hide the For You tab
| and always show the Following tab (plus blocking ads /
| promoted tweets etc etc).
|
| no connection / satisfied user
|
| [1] https://underpassapp.com/tweaks/
| jonjomckay wrote:
| Fritter supports this, and much more, without even needing an
| account or an API key! The beta version has a lot of nice
| features and a fresh UI.
|
| https://fritter.cc
|
| Disclaimer: I'm the creator of Fritter
| insin wrote:
| The Userscripts extension [0] and the user script version of
| Tweak New Twitter [1] are both open-source, used on top of the
| web version that'll give you a forced non-algorithmic timeline
| (and more)
|
| [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/userscripts/id1463298887
|
| [1] https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new-
| twitter
| schnebbau wrote:
| > we would ask you to please consider not requesting a refund
| from Apple
|
| If I pay for something and don't get the promised value why
| should I be the one who eats it?
|
| This is going to hurt the dev but that's business and I'm sure
| their bank balance is doing just fine. Appealing to the users
| like this feels unfair.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I think there are two key questions here:
|
| (1) Exactly what did the user pay for?
|
| If it's an app that promises to provide access to Twitter, then
| I'd think the app developer is responsible for making the
| necessary arrangements with Twitter to uphold that promise.
|
| If it's an app that promises to make a best-effort attempt to
| use Twitter's public APIs, then a refund doesn't sound
| reasonable.
|
| (2) Should the user consider this a simple business
| relationship, or something more personal? I.e., even if a case
| could be made for a refund, should that matter?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Something more parasocial more like it.
|
| Remember, if Musk puts you out of work, you're a refugee, but
| if anyone else puts you out of work, you're merely
| unfortunate.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I hope no one ever kicks you when you're down. You might want
| to consider extending others the same grace.
| schnebbau wrote:
| They aren't some poor dev struggling to eat and pay bills,
| they've been one of the most popular third party Twitter apps
| for 15 years. They are not down.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They'll _be_ down if everyone asks for a refund and they
| wind up losing years worth of revenue.
| schnebbau wrote:
| They'll be slightly less rich, but still considerably
| more rich than most of us.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| You seem to know a lot about the economics of being an
| indie app developer and consulting firm. You should share
| more about how much cash they must be rolling in.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| If everyone asks for a refund, won't they wind up losing
| some fraction of one year's worth of revenue?
| kelnos wrote:
| Too bad? The idea that we should treat companies that
| stop longer providing a product as charities deserving of
| free money is a bit silly.
|
| Twitterific built their business on something that we
| often acknowledge here as being very shaky: the whim of a
| third-party platform. If the company hasn't considered
| and prepared for the scenario where that third-party
| platform completely cuts off your access, that's
| irresponsible as a business owner.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You have to ignore an awful lot of kicked down people to
| start donating to recently-employed developers.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > If I pay for something and don't get the promised value why
| should I be the one who eats it?
|
| Why should the developer? It would be wrong to say "You won't
| get a refund" but that's not what they're doing.
| schnebbau wrote:
| Because I paid them for something and I'm not receiving it?
| This isn't a hard concept.
| monsieurgaufre wrote:
| That EM likes to burn bridges does not change the nature of
| your transaction with Twitterific. You did not pay for
| access to Twitter: you paid for an app that you received.
| Asking for a refund is ... questionnable.
| jacquesm wrote:
| But: you did receive it. You received it immediately when
| you paid for it. And you've used it in the meantime and
| presumably derived value from it otherwise you would have
| asked for a refund immediately upon delivery.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Precisely.
|
| I wouldn't judge anyone who bought it a month ago for
| asking for a refund, but if you've been using the app
| since 2019 or something, you got what you paid for, for
| years.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Does Apple give refunds for four-year old app downloads?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Good question. Anything over 90 days I would see as
| unreasonable.
| pessimizer wrote:
| So anyone getting a refund is probably a recent
| purchaser.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I don't know because I don't know the App store rules for
| these refunds. But if they do allow longer refunds it
| should have massive repercussions for any App store
| developers that want to stay in business in the longer
| term if they are basing their App on someone else's API,
| even with permission.
| stcroixx wrote:
| Yeah, it was hard to believe what I was reading there. Building
| something that can't stand alone as a product without a 3rd
| party API is always a big risk for a developer. When it blows
| up, should not be made the customers problem.
| maxbond wrote:
| It was a request and not a demand, if you value the service the
| dev provided the community more than the money, you might not
| refund it, otherwise, presumably you will. Recently I had a
| pizza come an hour and a half late because the restaurant was
| swamped, and I'd already gotten hungry and eaten something
| else. I tipped the same amount as I would have otherwise
| because the tip, in my mind, isn't about rewarding great
| service, it's about providing a livelihood to the employees.
| (Were things different for restaurant workers, I might feel
| differently, but in the current incarnation stiffing someone a
| tip isn't denying them a bonus, it's denying them a wage.)
| musicale wrote:
| If the app was actually usable for 18 days in January, it
| doesn't make sense for users to ask for a full refund for the
| January subscription charge.
|
| Wouldn't a fair solution be to offer a partial refund,
| proportional to time that subscribers paid for but are unable
| to use?
| kelsolaar wrote:
| Small business whose significant chunk of income just
| evaporated asking to be nice with them seems fair.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Fair to who? If you're going to pay for a product you aren't
| receiving, I'm sure you could find a better recipient. Every
| charity would love to sell you nothing.
| Felmo wrote:
| It's a fair als nothing more.
|
| Get over your ego
| smileysteve wrote:
| "Please consider"
|
| Is just an appeal and makes the choice clear.
|
| Likely, some customers that did purchase it have received some
| value; It's likely the difference between needing to claim
| bankruptcy protection and quietly dissolving
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| Either way, and I am _absolutely not_ in a position to draw
| _any conclusion_ about _any customer_ who requests or does
| not request a refund.
| kelnos wrote:
| * * *
| kivle wrote:
| Would you also claim your money back if Twitter closed down? If
| your logic became reality you could kiss goodbye to any third-
| party client for any type of network service. The Twitter
| clients are not at fault here. It's 100% on Twitter/Musk.
| rideontime wrote:
| > I'm sure their bank balance is doing just fine
|
| Source?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Let's hope that other people see it differently and have a more
| empathic response. I get what you are trying to communicate but
| realize that this was done without their control and in a way
| that instantly destroyed their business as it was. If you pile
| on and ask for a refund then you are making things _much_ worse
| for them, and you _did_ get value out of it in the past. The
| 'promised value' has been delivered, your beef is with Twitter,
| not with the developers.
|
| Assumptions about their bank balance and 'that's business' are
| the wrong way to approach this.
| [deleted]
| blibble wrote:
| I wouldn't refund a one off app purchase, but this is an
| ongoing subscription
|
| given this, it was certainly within their control to attempt
| to negotiate a contract with their only supplier and then
| they would have contractual guarantees about not being
| summarily cut off
|
| (would musk have cut them off? probably, but then they could
| go after him)
|
| without that the business model was always based on chance
|
| they knew this, and continued to sell the product regardless
| jacquesm wrote:
| Having an app key issued counts as permission in my book.
| Subscription refunds should be limited to the period during
| which service was _not_ provided.
|
| And good luck negotiating anything with a billion dollar
| company, they'll be happy to stiff you if they want to but
| in the meantime _you_ are beholden to the terms of the
| contract. This because they typically have legal staff and
| you probably don 't so there is a huge asymmetry in any
| kind of legal tussle with them.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| So you'd try to get a refund on your beach vacation if it
| rained?
| sgarrity wrote:
| This feels a bit more like the power & water was cut off to
| the beach house, but I like taking metaphors one step to far.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| The basic point is that no-one pays for a Twitter client
| expecting it to keep working if (say) Twitter closes down
| or pivots into a rideshare company or decides to close down
| third-party access to the platform. On any reasonable
| viewpoint that's a risk accepted by the purchaser, not the
| app seller.
| esskay wrote:
| If you bought a 12 month subscription to Netflix and they
| closed down next week are you honestly saying you
| wouldn't be asking for a refund?
|
| It doesn't matter that its an app for Twitter, you've
| paid for someone to provide something they can no longer
| deliver.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| If I bought a Netflix subscription, I'd expect them to
| provide the Netflix service. If I bought a TV with a
| Netflix app on it, I wouldn't expect a partial refund
| from the people who sold me the TV. Do you honestly not
| see these two things are different?
|
| One is "I paid for a service" and the other is "I paid
| for something to help me use a service".
| mads wrote:
| Well, if he was promised 100% sunshine, he might.
| [deleted]
| yurishimo wrote:
| To be ultra charitable, if I bought a subscription for the
| app as a brand new customer and the very next week, Twitter
| revoked their API keys and kills the app entirely, yea I'm
| probably asking for a refund.
|
| If I had been a customer for years and years, obviously my
| calculation would be different.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| You are minimizing the situation with your metaphor. It's
| more like if you arrived at the house and they told you that
| you can't get in at all. Would you ask for a refund?
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| No; my metaphor is quite precise. You're renting the beach
| house because it helps you enjoy the good weather while
| sitting on the sand. However, the beach house owner isn't
| responsible for providing the good weather: only the house
| itself. The beach house owner isn't in control of the
| weather, and you knew that at the time you rented.
| baxtr wrote:
| You might be right, but your comment comes across as cold
| blooded.
| yokoprime wrote:
| Absolutely. And this is a mere request from them, not
| something they can actually tell their customers. Apple is
| the sole judge on whether you shall receive a refund. The
| actual maker is not involved in that process.
| abrookewood wrote:
| If I didn't know better, I'd be wondering if Musk was shorting
| Twitter's stock. Has anyone ever managed to do so much damage to
| a company in such a short amount of time?
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Official Twitter Statement on Revoking API Access to 3rd Party
| Devs_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34416416 - Jan 2023
| (11 comments)
|
| _Twitter kicking off a developer API campaign on January 16,
| 2023_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34410624 - Jan 2023
| (107 comments)
|
| _Tweetbot is back down again_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34396664 - Jan 2023 (210
| comments)
|
| _The Shit Show_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34393485
| - Jan 2023 (312 comments)
|
| _Twitter API Page_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34387834 - Jan 2023 (98
| comments)
|
| _Twitter 's API is down?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34363743 - Jan 2023 (408
| comments)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Official Twitter Statement on Revoking API Access to 3rd
| Party Devs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34416416 -
| Jan 2023 (11 comments)
|
| To be clear, this statement was a lie. They added the "long-
| standing policy" today, retroactively.
| https://www.engadget.com/twitter-new-developer-terms-ban-thi...
|
| (Musk also promised a vote on major policy changes.
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604616863673208832)
| erenkaplan wrote:
| It is very sad that mavericks kill good projects for their own
| benefit.
| klyrs wrote:
| The sad thing is that third-party apps are actually good for
| twitter. Musk continues to cut his nose to spite his face.
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| Make no mistake, there are no benefits to Twitter doing things
| like this.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Having control on which ads are shown to users probably is
| one.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > for their own benefit.
|
| I'd question the 'benefit' bit; this seems clearly bad for
| Twitter.
| saurik wrote:
| I maintain the position I have had ever since Twitter sold people
| on the ridiculous idea of "API keys": the correct path has
| _always_ been adversarial interoperability (as we did back
| forever ago when people built alternative apps for instant
| messaging services); if Twitterrific had been designed to use the
| same API and authority as the official app--maybe as a fallback,
| if nothing else--Twitter would not have been easily able to kill
| it... they could try, but it would be a cat and mouse game at
| best, and the only real recourse they would have would have been
| to try to detect API abnormalities (which Twitterific could
| quickly fix, and frankly the skeleton crew at Twitter today
| likely couldn 't do well anyway) to directly punish _the end
| users_ for continuing to insist on logging in with alternative
| clients (as Snapchat is forced to do); and, while it is easy to
| just shut off Twitterific 's API key and tell the users "too
| bad", I think having to take the war to Twitterific's userbase
| (as the app would be able to keep working forever, with only
| momentary brownouts) would be a tougher pill for Twitter to
| swallow, given that it had way too much marketshare at this
| point.
| placatedmayhem wrote:
| I don't know the specifics about Twitter's API saga over the
| years but... why isn't this the case? Why does Twitter need to
| be involved on the client side with consumption of the API?
| vkou wrote:
| > Why does Twitter need to be involved on the client side
| with consumption of the API?
|
| They don't need to be involved, they _want_ to be involved,
| and they have the legal backing to do so.
| saurik wrote:
| Can you provide any citation for them having "legal
| backing"? I literally participate in hearings at the
| Copyright Office at the Library of Congress over people
| providing adversarial interoperability and I have never
| seen any functional legal argument against such.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Twitterific is made by Iconfactory in Greensboro NC. Twitter
| can sue for violating their terms of service if they did as you
| suggest.
| saurik wrote:
| So I am not a lawyer, and if you do this stuff you should get
| a real lawyer (I mean, I have lots of real lawyers! ;P), but
| I _am_ on the front lines of a lot of these battles (look
| into who I am if you haven 't; hell: I've had Snapchat once
| try to come after people in my ecosystem, and the only thing
| their lawyers had as an argument was trademark law... I
| easily shoved them away), and I am going to claim Twitter
| would have no legs to stand on. At best-- _at BEST_ --they
| could ban you and all of your company accounts from their
| service.
| solarkraft wrote:
| > look into who I am if you haven't
|
| Heh. To save some people a click: An important figure in
| the iOS jailbreaking scene (maker of the foundational
| tweaking framework and app store).
|
| Thanks for all the good times. Jailbreaking was great for
| my experimentation urge and taught me a lot about Unix. It
| also informed some software opinions I still hold today
| (much more things should work like WinterBoard's layering).
| A jailbreakable iOS device is a great educational toy for a
| kid interested in messing with technology (Amazon Kindles
| are good for this too, by the way).
|
| And thanks for also being involved in legally defending
| these freedoms. (I've been waiting for a chance to say this
| without writing a completely unproductive comment)
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Thinking about it more, I think you're probably right. If
| LinkedIn wasnt able to stop HiQ, then I dont see how this
| would be different.
| MatthiasPortzel wrote:
| So maybe they can't sue the company making a third party
| app. But take Discord for instance. It's against the
| Discord terms of service to use a third party client, and
| there are stories of Discord banning users who do use
| third-party clients.
|
| Now, Discord doesn't need to sue anyone to stop me from
| using a third party client--the threat of being banned is
| enough deterrent to keep me on the official client.
| saurik wrote:
| I talked about that in at least half of my original
| comment. To repeat, Twitterific managed to get to having
| the kind of marketshare to make that war interesting (in
| a way Discord clients never have and likely never will:
| they didn't make the same bargain with third-party app
| developers that Twitter did, where Twitter left most of
| the innovation to third-parties).
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| That is the reason I only use it in my browser to apply
| custom css and fix their ugly mess - design decisions -
| to my liking.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I apologize if this comes across as a snarky tangent, but I'm
| genuinely curious if law firms would even contract with
| Twitter now, given Musk's willingness to not pay bills.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Somebody would be willing to do it for the clout
| anotherman554 wrote:
| Law firms can demand payment in advance. It's called a
| retainer.
| Klonoar wrote:
| While I think I've come around to this position, the big
| question here that comes to mind is: does this even work for
| iOS apps, given Twitter could just go to Apple (the App Store
| team, I guess) over it?
| saurik wrote:
| This is the rub, and I do believe the answer is "no" :/. But,
| "Apple having central control over software development and
| distribution is, at its best, an extra-judicial defense of
| surveillance capitalism (...and, at its worst, an extra-
| judicial defense of totalitarian regimes)" is at least
| nothing new :(.
|
| I really miss the iOS jailbreak ecosystem--back before Apple
| really started to win--as I felt like I could just build
| whatever I wanted (as long as it was legal and I definitely
| had lots of lawyers to check some of the stuff I had wanted
| to release ;P) and push it without asking for permission from
| Big Tech :(.
| pavlov wrote:
| Unauthorized "gray" third-party clients were a more viable
| option in the days when vendors couldn't easily update first-
| party client program installations in the wild, so the API had
| to be backwards compatible.
|
| But it's not really like that for Twitter. They can do rapid
| updates to the iOS and Android apps, and any holdovers of old
| client versions would be a relatively small segment.
|
| I recall Microsoft tried to build and maintain their own
| YouTube client for Windows Phone around 2011-12. That's
| probably the last time a major tech company tried this approach
| and it was out of massive desperation. Google seemed to make a
| special effort to break the app.
| saurik wrote:
| I have been running the same copy of Facebook and Twitter and
| certainly YouTube on my phone for many years now. The only
| people who have been able to try to push updates at people
| like that are Snapchat, and even they have a hard time doing
| it quickly and at scale: and it only results in a temporary
| loss of service for the alternative clients!
|
| (And, even then, most of the success for Snapchat comes
| because 1) the official clients for Snapchat go far out of
| their way to do crazy obfuscation techniques and 2) they
| wield a ban hammer over _end users_ over trivial infractions
| making it difficult to test; I fail to see how such would
| work for YouTube, where third-party clients are, in fact,
| _plentiful_ ).
|
| At F8 back forever ago, the reason Zuckerberg cited for
| having to give up on "Move Fast and Break Things" and go to
| "Move Fast with Stable Infra" is because they in fact
| couldn't rapidly push updates to their apps across the myriad
| supported platforms the way they could with their website,
| and so they effectively had to maintain API compatibility
| across ridiculously long timespans of client versions... much
| long enough to let the alternative clients reverse engineer
| the new builds and have updates out before Facebook can just
| kill service to the old ones.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > But it's not really like that for Twitter. They can do
| rapid updates to the iOS and Android apps
|
| They can do rapid updates to the apps but doesn't it take
| time for users to apply the update? Where I work you can't
| expect people to update their app right away, it takes days
| or even weeks for people to catch up.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Android and iOS have had automatic background updates (on
| by default) for years.
| valleyer wrote:
| No. All they have to do is to deny access to the old app
| with a "you must update to the new version of the app"
| alert, and people will comply.
| solarkraft wrote:
| There's probably a need for legislation here. It's completely
| normal _and vital for competition_ that you can make things
| that are (adversarially) interoperable with others in the
| physical realm and you can 't really be stopped (as long as
| you don't just copy).
|
| That's not really a thing once you involve software. It's
| trivial to lock things down using cryptography and constant
| changes, making any kind of interoperability entirely
| infeasible.
|
| As far as I understand this is pretty unprecedented and very
| bad for an efficient market.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| > They can do rapid updates to the iOS and Android apps
|
| Sort of! I haven't updated my iOS install in many months. I
| don't see the new fake blue checks or a handful of other dumb
| new features, it's kind of great!
| runjake wrote:
| This wouldn't play out like you want to believe.
|
| All your suggestions lead to a terms of service violation for
| the Icon Factory and would likely result in their Apple
| developer accounts being banned, especially if Elon wanted to
| pursue it.
|
| Getting their developer accounts banned would affect their
| other products, as well as any future products.
|
| Aside from all the above, the vast majority of their
| Twitterrific customers doesn't understand API keys and will
| complain and request app and subscription refunds, likely also
| leading to developer account problems.
|
| Falken's Law applies here: _The only winning move is not to
| play._
| saurik wrote:
| I hate Apple :(. Like, isn't it kind of ridiculous how the
| issue here isn't that doing this is somehow illegal, but that
| Apple is willing to step in to remove apps that hurt fellow
| Big Tech companies? Apple simply _should not_ have
| centralized control over what software can and cannot exist:
| that 's the real issue.
| toxik wrote:
| The writing is on the wall though, Apple is going to have
| to let other app stores exist. I think the EU said so
| already, and I would bet the Brussels effect will make this
| happen elsewhere.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| > 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
|
| I understand that many people are angry about recent Twitter
| changes. This rightly so, because many 3rd party apps are
| obviously a huge time investment and people have bought apps.
| This seems unjust.
|
| However, with all the recent disclosures about Twitter
| shadowbanning, deboosting, deamplifying, banning, and viewpoint
| censoring, I cannot help but feel that Twitter has always been
| capricious.
|
| It is only now that we are recognizing it : the unfortunate
| reality that a private company controls a defacto public square.
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