Social Media Platform Twitter Updates Developer Terms, Enforce Longstanding API Rules

Social media platform Twitter  has updated its developer terms agreement, which has seen it enforce long-standing API rules.

Twitter’s recent update prohibits the use or access to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to Twitter applications.

Change in the terms of agreement is coming days after Twitter restricted popular third-party apps such as Tweetbot, Twitterific, etc from accessing the platform. Users and developers of third-party apps last week expressed concerns after they were faced with difficulty logging into Twitter to access their feeds.

This prompted the suggestion from users that Twitter likely made some changes to its API for third-party clients.

Despite all these concerns expressed by users, Twitter failed to issue a statement to address the problem, which spurred a lot of Twitter’s third-party apps developers to suggest that Twitter deliberately blocked them from accessing the platform.

Popular third-party app Tweetbot revealed that it reached out to Twitter to find out the details of the problem, but never got any response.

Meanwhile, there were internal messages at the social company that disclosed that its shutdown of third-party clients was a deliberate decision by the company and was not a bug issue.

With Twitter’s recent update of its developer terms agreement, third-party apps now know their stand on the whole issue as a lot of them have been cut off from gaining access to the platform.

Reacting to Twitter’s recent update, third-party app Twitterific Sean Heber described Twitter as “increasingly capricious”, while noting that he no longer recognizes the company as trustworthy or wants to work with them.

Investors King understands that Twitter has for long been permissive and supportive of third-party apps, but all these have changed following Musk’s takeover of the company.

Ever since Musk acquired the company for $44 billion in October 2022, he has been carrying out a series of revamps which have been followed by criticisms.