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Twitter Cripples Third-Party Clients…Again

Twitter has spent years fighting the third-party clients the company once encouraged. Despite protests from developers and users (see “Twitter App Developers Band Together to Fight API Changes,” 21 May 2018), Twitter has gone ahead with its latest restrictions on third-party clients. Clients can no longer live-stream tweets or send push notifications. If you want those features, you now must turn to Twitter’s official apps. But while it’s cutting out outside developers, Twitter has a bad record of maintaining its own clients, having killed off its own Mac app months ago (see “Three Alternatives to Twitter’s Now-Defunct Mac App,” 2 March 2018). Twitter’s Rob Johnson shared an internal email on Twitter, along with other comments intended to placate users, but based on Michael Tsai’s sampling of responses, Johnson’s explanations fell flat.

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Comments About Twitter Cripples Third-Party Clients…Again

Notable Replies

  1. irritating. If I can’t use Twitterrific, I won’t use Twitter much as the native app is lame.
    Edit, I forgot there isn’t even a native Mac app (only, barely, an iOS app). #eyeroll

  2. This just one reason why I left twitter.

    There are many others.

    Yet I found a new home for my micro blogging habit. I found a surprisingly open and welcoming group that shares a lot of links, has real discussions without yelling, and posts stuff I would not see otherwise. It feels a lot like twitter did many years ago.

    here: Log in - CounterSocial

    “CounterSocial is the first Social Network Platform to take a zero-tolerance stance to hostile nations, bot accounts and trolls who are weaponizing OUR social media platforms and freedoms to engage in influence operations against us. And we’re here to counter it.”

    There is a nice new Mac app that works with it and other “Mastodon” instances.

    here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whalebird/id1378283354?mt=12

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