Tweetbot is (mostly) working again

Tweetbot is back online after an outage left major third-party Twitter apps broken. The service currently lets users sign in and browse, but users are still struggling to post tweets.

The Verge

And now dead again, along with some old unused API keys, which proves that this was intentional and we and others were specifically targeted.

I wouldn't have swapped out the keys in the first place if there was even a shred of communication. Figured if nothing else this would push the issue.

Oh well, on to smaller but greener pastures.

@paul to overcome this, i’m now trying to build a tool that syncs my timeline to a private mastodon server… to many of my contacts still use twitter sadly and i can’t live without tweetbot, but ivory as twitter client could be my solution :D
@niko not sure if you’ve already looked into it, but you might try BirdsiteLive https://github.com/NicolasConstant/BirdsiteLive to bridge between Twitter and Mastodon?
GitHub - NicolasConstant/BirdsiteLive: An ethical bridge from Twitter

An ethical bridge from Twitter. Contribute to NicolasConstant/BirdsiteLive development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
@exkclamation i’m not exactly sure what that does 🤔 will it just crosspost between the platforms or is it practically cloning my twitter timeline to mastodon? 🤔
Ah i think i figured it out, that’s only half the idea… would work but i would need to put all of the users i follow on twitter in there without them knowing and creating a pseudo-mastodon account for them to follow, that looks like it could work but seems not really clean 😅

@niko as far as I understand, it lets you set up a server on your own domain to follow any Twitter account on Mastodon. You can test it out on some birdsitelive servers already out there, see https://fedidb.org/software/birdsitelive

As an example, on Mastodon if you follow @[email protected] (replace ‘tapbots’ with any Twitter user name) it will show their new tweets here.

You can’t boost the posts here, and of course favs/replies don’t go to Twitter, but otherwise works pretty well so far for me.

FediDB - Developer Tools for ActivityPub

Developer Tools for ActivityPub

@exkclamation yeah so it creates like a virtual account for them here… but like this, i can’t interact with them really 😅

@niko exactly. Not perfect but at least a partial workaround for now

I look forward to seeing what you come up with as a more functional bridge

@exkclamation if i get it to work i will toot about it and put it on my github! but those apis are complex and i need to get a sense for them first 😵‍💫😁

@exkclamation @niko @tapbots I have to ask, does BSL work for you? I've tried various instances, but I don't get any tweets displayed in the bots (even for instances with saturation < 100%).

It should work like this: Find BSL instance, create bot with desired Twitter handle, follow bot, right?

Did I forget something?

@meNeither yes, but give it a few hours. Seems to me they make a pass of Twitter on a schedule (perhaps hourly?) and then send posts to Mastodon. So posts are usually delayed by a few hours.

When you first follow the account, no posts will show up and the account will look empty.

In my experience I don’t even need to specifically create a bot for it… I just type @[twitterusername]@[mastodon.instance] into the search box and click follow.

Hope that helps 😊

@exkclamation So I just need to be a little more patient? Will do. Thank you!

@meNeither perhaps you could test it out on a few very active twitter accounts to see? There is always the possibility that the BSL server you are using doesn't scrape Twitter as often?

But yes, in my experience if the accounts do show up in your profile's "following" tab, but just don't have any information yet I would give it a bit more time to see.

@meNeither one note, if you are using ivory: search for the user’s name+instance, but don’t tap the “search” button at the bottom, instead tap the “go to username…” 3rd row from the top… and then on that next user profile page tap the follow button. (Sometimes it takes a few second, or you can use the gear icon then follow)

If you are using the web it should pop up as a little person/plus symbol icon.

And the native Mastodon client I think shows the profil with a follow button?

@exkclamation Funny, I stumbled on this very thing. :) But I think I get it now.

I even follow myself on Twitter (for testing purposes).

If all fails, I'll set up my own BSL instance. But I think it's just a problem with my patience.

It's good to know that it generally works. Thanks again :)

@niko Not sure if this is what you’re looking for but I use https://moa.party to sync my toots to bird and v/v. It lets you selectively do it too based on hashtags.
Moa: Mastodon/Twitter/Instagram Crossposter

Link your Mastodon account to Twitter and Instagram

@rosss that’s like a crossposter am I right? i’m already using one to sync my own standalone posts between both platforms, but i want my twitter timeline (containing tweets from all the people i follow on twitter) synced to mastodon, getting displayed as posts from one single account. this should look like this:

tweet @[email protected]:
hello this is a tweet i tweeted to twitter

if i interact with this tweet, it should redirect likes to the original tweet by @dieserniko on twitter 😵‍💫😂

@niko Oh I totally misunderstood what you meant 😂. That does sound like something people would use! I just need access to @ivory as I keep missing the TestFlight releases 😶
@rosss @ivory it’s also kind of a wild plan, not sure if i will get that to work (need to get twitter to give me api access first) and if it will work like i hope it to but we’ll see…
hopefully that’s soon available for everyone! right now, the only difference for me between the two apps is the different color scheme i set to see in which app i am currently 😂
@paul my timeline in this case means the timeline of all the people i follow, not all of my own tweets/toots! basically my twitter home feed!
@niko Ihrere is already such tool you could self host and restrict to your mastodon host only: https://github.com/NicolasConstant/BirdsiteLive
GitHub - NicolasConstant/BirdsiteLive: An ethical bridge from Twitter

An ethical bridge from Twitter. Contribute to NicolasConstant/BirdsiteLive development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
@niko Birdsitelive does something similar. Uses your own api key too and works well for me so far until its doesn’t I suppose.
@steve This was mentioned multiple times to me but it doesn’t let me interact with twitter, only with the twitter contents on mastodon but that’s not the idea 😅