Mastodawn

Keyword “Intentional”.
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musks-twitter-intentionally-suspended-tweet-bot-third-party-apps-messages-show

Musk’s Twitter Intentionally Suspended Tweetbot, Third-Party Apps, Messages Show

The mysterious outage of Tweetbot and other third-party Twitter clients that began Thursday night was an intentional suspension, according to internal messages viewed by The Information. The suspension cut off the ability of people to use Twitter on outside apps, forcing them to go to Twitter’s ...

The Information

DF has a good summation of this latest revelation.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/01/14/information-twitter-slack-confirmation

Even without these leaks if you add up the lack of communication, only impacting the top 25-50 Twitter API clients and clients showing up as suspended in the dev. dashboard. The only conclusion at this point is that it was intentional and not any kind of bug.

For the record, still no official or even unofficial communication from anyone within Twitter.

If You Needed Any More Confirmation, Internal Slack Messages at Twitter Show That Cutting Off Third-Party Clients Was ‘Intentional’

Link to: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musks-twitter-intentionally-suspended-tweet-bot-third-party-apps-messages-show?rc=jfy0lk

Daring Fireball

And I really want an official public statement. We have a large number of sub. renewals for year 3 of Tweetbot coming up in a couple of weeks. If we're permanently cut off I need to know so we can remove the app from sale and prevent those. Which obviously I'd rather not do.

Charles Johnson Jan 15, 2023

This really sucks, and the worst part is no notice or explanation at all. It’s just chickenshit behavior.

@paul yea they really need to its just wrong to not even mention it.

René [¬º-°]¬Jan 15, 2023

@paul I hope for you that you can build a good business here. Whatever happens, I will keep my Tweetbot subscription for now.

Charlie Fish Jan 15, 2023

@paul Even with a public statement, with how crazy the leader over there is, it probably doesn’t have the same meaning a public statement from another company would. How many times has he lied, reversed course, or made false promises about delivery dates?

@fishcharlie yep, well aware of that too.

Charlie Fish Jan 15, 2023

@paul Can’t wait to try @ivory. Really interested in trying to make Mastodon work. Thank you for all your hard work!

Anthony Sorace Jan 15, 2023

@fishcharlie @paul https://pdx.social/@a/109690903620375640

Anthony Sorace (@[email protected])

I know there are nontrivial revenue streams involved, and we are still nominally waiting on official communication, but even if Twitter comes back with some “we’ll turn the tap back on if you put in do X” the folks at Iconfactory and TapBots have to be pretty close to saying “fuck it, we’re out“, right?

pdx.social

Tylor Sweeney Jan 15, 2023

@paul they needed to make a statement yesterday. At this point, you’re not getting a notice until Tuesday at the earliest (due to the 4-day holiday weekend in the States). I went ahead and cancelled my sub just as a precaution, but you and all the other 3rd party client devs deserved way better than this.

Ole Kristian Mørch-Storstein Jan 15, 2023

@paul it's mindbogglingly unprofessional of Twitter. I subscribe to Tweetbot, and I will move over to Ivory the second I can get my hands on it.

len damico Jan 15, 2023

@paul for what it’s worth, I’m a tweetbot subscriber and will continue to be until y’all kill it. I will also be an Ivory subscriber on day one. Just know you have a lot of folks in your corner who are happy to pay for your premium products.

joseph Jan 15, 2023

@len @paul seconded.

Chris R. Donnelly Jan 15, 2023

@paul oh wow. Y’all released the last major app in February didn’t you?

nathan Jan 15, 2023

@cdonnellytx @paul they released a point update the morning of

Alex Jan 15, 2023

@paul we got your back.

Rainer Sigwald Jan 15, 2023

@paul that is honorable and right but as one data point my renewal went through on the 4th and I’m not mad (at you).

Javier Heredia Jan 15, 2023

@paul I’ve been a happy Tweetbot user since 2012. My renewal is one of those.

I’d rather pay for another year and just wait for Ivory to be out than have you all suffer financially because one of cowardly dipshit.

Jochie 👨🏻‍💻🏳️‍🌈Jan 15, 2023

@paul Any chance you could offer conversions of subscriptions of one app into something equivalent for another?

Added clarification, after seeing some of the responses: Like others, I am not interested in it for myself. My curiosity is/was whether it was is something that Tapbots might be able to offer to unhappy customers that get renewed for what is now a non-functional bit of software.

@jochie I'd actually like to do this, feels like a reasonable compromise. The problem is that I don't think I have a way to read the TB sub in Ivory. I thought I had code in place that would copy the App Store receipt to a directory that would be readable by our other apps. But apparently only had that in place for TB5.

It's only a few lines of code to do it, but not like I can get an app that doesn't function through App Store review.

Remco van Bree Jan 15, 2023

@paul @jochie one would hope that Apple would make a one time exception because this would allow users to have something of value after Twitter effectively killed off the users' investment, but of course we're talking about App store reviews, so that's never gonna happen

@paul @jochie Any chance you can have TB and Ivory able to connect with each other to exchange the receipt? Maybe you can add it to TB in an app update.

Asbjørn Ulsberg Jan 15, 2023

@travelingflwr @paul @jochie I don’t know, but Apple is probably not going to accept an update of Tweetbot as long as Twitter is blocking access to its API, since that leaves Tweetbot a non-functioning app, breaking one of the major app review requirements.

Mike Beasley Jan 15, 2023

@paul @jochie What if someone generated new API tokens from a different Twitter dev account for you so that the app could get through app review?

Dominic Nieto Jan 15, 2023

@MikeBeas @paul @jochie probably not worth the risk of getting sued.

spla Jan 15, 2023

@MikeBeas tried that, does not work. When my code sent the very first "write to twitter" command some kind of automated thing switched my dev account from write access to read only access

Robert Weißgraeber🇪🇺Jan 15, 2023

@paul @jochie could you just add the ivory part to tweetbot?

rickfillion Jan 15, 2023

@paul @jochie I think that’s only a good/fun idea in theory. In reality it’s signing up for problems later when users need to remember that their sub for one app is actually paid through another app in the store.

@rickfillion we've got problems either way, at least this way it'd get some people who are mid-sub something out of it.

Thomas N (old account)

@paul This happened to @[email protected] last month when they had an outage, they couldn’t push an update to the App Store for people to manually export data, they could only do so to TestFlight :/

https://twitter.com/trakt/status/1604882502845313024

Trakt on Twitter

“@golddave Apple won’t approve an app update with the api down, so unfortunately no. We’re hoping to recover your missing data soon so hopefully it’s all back to normal.”

Twitter

FlatFootFox Moved to Hachyderm Jan 15, 2023

@paul Honestly after the weekend you’ve gone through, I’d be fine with you double dipping on a year of Tweetbot and a year of Ivory. Y’all were done dirty.

Raf Noboa y Rivera Jan 15, 2023

@FlatFootFox @paul same here.

Michael Kroes Jan 18, 2023

@FlatFootFox @paul same, I'll even pay before it's completely finished. It's already my main client and replaced Tweetbot on my home screen.

She smashes Jan 15, 2023

@paul the ivory sub should be $8 just like twitter blue.

My credit card is ready.

Eric Harris Jan 15, 2023

@dbsmasher @paul ditto

Chris Hasenpflug Jan 15, 2023

@paul what about ripping out code and publishing an update with the sole purpose of migrating the sub? I hope you’d find some support within Apple for this

Khaos Tian Jan 15, 2023

@paul app review typically approves the “shutdown” app update. If you don’t want to do that, maybe you can have you backend to return a different, not suspended API key for 17.0.0.0/8 to have a functioning app for review 😅

@khaost I'm 100% not pushing my luck with App Review. Once we have a real answer from Twitter I'll probably try to get a hold of someone at Apple and have an actual talk about what they'll allow us to do.

Khaos Tian Jan 15, 2023

@paul good luck 🙏

Jari Pennanen Jan 15, 2023

@paul Tip, @gruber made an account: @daringfireball he is clearly so angry, that something moved.

Andy Jan 15, 2023

@paul that's so horrible.

but kinda also expected.

with 1.1 and the clients back then being killed one-by-one with the 100k token limit this was bad enough, now we just have no-frills suspension.

but I know enough people that use Twitter only with those apps, and that might get many to switch over/stop using Twitter entirely.

Andy Jan 15, 2023

@paul I guess the last straw many people hang onto is TweetDeck, or rather legacy TweetDeck.

but with moves like that, I assume that Musk will aim to just do a hard launch of the new TweetDeck, which includes all the Web Twitter features (like algo-backed timelines), and maybe even put promoted posts in there.

0ddfactory Jan 15, 2023

@pixel @paul I sure hope so, if I had known the fediverse existed I might have swapped back when they crippled the API to barely function and not send notifications to begin with.

menotti Jan 15, 2023

@paul The sooner we all leave, the better. There is not going to be a lot of respect for "old Twitter". I think you and others have an awesome opportunity to make onboarding to a new network like this one so much easier and help accelerate a migration hopefully. It's not going to be easy but I'm not sticking around to get kicked between the legs by the new ownership over and over.

Drea Jan 15, 2023

@44 I agree. And I think really nice third-party apps will help accelerate Mastodon’s adoption, especially if they make onboarding easier and more mobile-friendly.

Tyler McGee Jan 15, 2023

@paul Seems really cowardly to do this and not even comment on it.

Also, I thought all major decisions going forward were to be decided via Twitter Poll, what happened to that? 🤔

Hard to build trust when you do stuff like this over and over.

@paul I’m not surprised that Elon is unable to show you the respect of communication. He’s clearly purged everyone with fundamental decency from inside his orbit.

nickharrison Jan 15, 2023

@paul Looks like the end of Twitter for me then. Mastodon and Vero will have to be the future

Stephen Battey Jan 15, 2023

@paul the part about it that is irking me the most is that I used Twitter daily for local news. Mastodon does not replicate that for me yet as no local journalists are on mastodon in my area.

Claire 🐇💨Jan 15, 2023

@stephen I’m in the same boat, lots of accounts I follow aren’t on Mastodon. My workaround is to use lists in the Twitter app. Lists display tweets in chronological order, and there are no ads. If I can’t use Tweetbot, I might just put all my follows into a main list. It’s the least bad option for staying on Twitter, IMO.

Kevin Spencer Jan 15, 2023

@stephen @paul yeah I’m in a bit of a pickle here. For while almost all the tech folk have moved to Mastodon, 75% of the people I follow are still on Twitter including journalists. Breaking news still happens on Twitter unfortunately.

Stephen Battey Jan 15, 2023

@kevinspencer I am attempting to setup a bot for the local papers RSS feed on my instance. If I can achieve that, I can at least sort of replicate my Twitter list for local news.

If that works out, my next step will be pestering local journalists lol.

monorail times Jan 15, 2023

@paul clown show

Sujal Shah Jan 15, 2023

@paul a lot of us respect the hell out of your work, even if Twitter (or Elon) doesn’t. Ready to support ivory development when you’re ready for us to do so.

Ben Ramsey Jan 15, 2023

@paul @hunter It’s interesting he says “using Twitter’s own apps or website, my @\gruber account shows a total of 7 mentions since January 5.”

I’m having a very different experience. I’m seeing 100s of mentions daily from web3/NFT/crypto accounts that are quote-tweeting other web3/NFT/crypto accounts, all of which I have blocked, but Twitter keeps showing them to me anyway, no matter how often I report and block them.

Hunter Skrasek Jan 15, 2023

@ramsey @paul Twitter first party has just been a disaster for a while. Without TweetBot, I’m probably 100% done with Twitter outside tweeting and pinning a “Elon musk sucks expletive, find me elsewhere” tweet

Chris Glass Jan 15, 2023

@paul I'm not sure why this is a surprise. All associated terms were blocked from appearing in the trending list. It was coordinated.

@TheChrisGlass haven’t heard that one.

Pendolino70 Jan 15, 2023

@paul Maybe a letter to the FCC?