The death of third party Twitter apps

On Friday, 13 January 2023, Twitter turned off access to most third party Twitter clients. People who used apps like Tweetbot, Twitterrific, and Echofon were suddenly shut out of their apps, faced with a screen that told them there’s an authentication issue. 

It’s not the first time third party apps were given the shaft by the company but this time there were no warnings, no official statements acknowledging the matter, no explanations. It’s as if millions of voices were suddenly silenced.

While there had been internal discussions about the ban, it wasn’t until almost a week later that there was an official word and even then there was no public communication that third party apps are no longer allowed. Engadget found out by diving into Twitter’s developer terms which were only just updated yesterday.

Twitterrific developer Craig Hockenberry was rightly incensed about the move, and his Iconfactory colleague Sean Heber wrote about having to shut down the app after 16 years. It’s absolutely clear that Twitter is no longer the same company as it was a year ago or even six months ago.

Unlike companies such as Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, or TikTok, Twitter had always been reliant on third party apps and solutions even near the beginning, which was why the 2012 API restrictions were met with massive backlash to which Twitter then relented. This time, though, no such luck.