@nomatic @FediFinder The real problem is that there is no pressure for services like Twitter to be interoperable, neither legal nor from their user base. Current doctrine dictates that walled gardens are the way to go, and that is unlikely to change without heavy regulation.

That said, I think it would be tricky to implement such regulation in such a way that it actually works, and without unintended side effects.

@nomatic @FediFinder Well you can still download an archive of all your data. That probably satisfies that requirement.

The problem is that that archive only contains very little information about the people you follow. In order to do the things Debirdify etc. do they need more than that, namely e.g. their bio, homepage, etc. Which is not technically "your" data.

Something like Twitodon probably still works with a Twitter archive in theory. But Twitodon always required more steps to use and was therefore not widely adopted. Adding even more steps, like downloading an archive you have to wait for for several days and then getting a specific file from it and uploading it someplace else, that will mean that basically no one will use that.

Plus it would be difficult to verify whether the person uploading the archive really is the owner of that Twitter account, i.e. someone could trick the system into believing they are, say, BarackObama on Twitter.

@nomatic @FediFinder I don't see how that violates GDPR. I can maybe see an anti-trust angle, but I don't really know anything about law.

Personally I'd be surprised if there were a law that mandates free (or cheap) API access for third parties.

Banning #Movetodon and #Debirdify without explanation and without responding to inquiries was an unfair move from Twitter for sure (although probably not illegal), but since Twitter has been announcing that they would shut down all API access for everyone anyway I think it would be hard to pursue that angle anyway.

@charlesgaba @scafaria Just FYI the API access isn't gone yet. #Fedifinder still works.

It's just that they suspended #Movetodon and #Debirdify (without giving a reason) but not #Fedifinder (not yet at least).