Third-party clients on Twitter are well and truly over: what does that mean?

The social network cut off access to its API to all third-party clients a few days ago. This new policy is now official.

Elon Musk and his teams have just made a decision that could once again cause a stir among Twitter users.

Twitter bans third-party apps from taking over its content and signs their death warrant

A few days ago, several publishers of third-party clients, such as Tweetbot or Twitterific, had indicated that their software could no longer access content published on Twitter. The latter quickly explained that this failure was not one, but a problem at the level of the API which allows the connection between the software and the servers of Twitter.

Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has been the most brutal for several months now, many have suspected the social network of having deliberately cut ties between independent publishers and its architecture. The information was more or less quickly confirmed by the transcripts of the discussions between the employees on the company’s internal Slack, but the latter had not seen fit to speak up until now.

The news is now official: from now on, you will have to go through Twitter’s iOS or Android client, or through its web platform to access your feed and your account.

A purely accounting decision, while Twitter has lost a lot of money since the arrival of Elon Musk

Twitter updated this Thursday, November 19 the part devoted to restrictions of use for developers. He therefore added a line to prohibit them now ” use or access the Licensed Content to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter applications “.

However, Twitter customers have always been part of the blue bird’s adventure and have partly contributed to its success, even if the service had already tightened the screw in 2021, before the arrival of Elon Musk. They had been prohibited from removing advertisements or certain features specific to the social network.

The founder of Tesla now wants to regain 100% control over the user experience, but also and above all over the volume of advertisements displayed. Twitter is in dire need of cash after a historic drop in revenue, and Elon Musk appears to be more than ready to wipe the slate clean to make a profit from his costly $44 billion acquisition. And so much the worse for its historical partners.

The consequences of this decision did not take long to manifest themselves. Twitterific has already been removed from the Apple App Store by its publisher, and the other clients still available today will have no choice but to disappear.

Source : Engadget