Pretty much every third-party Twitter app available to users has stopped working. It has been almost four days since the issues popped up locking users out of logging into apps such as Twitteriffic, Fenix and Tweetbot. The issues started on Thursday after users reported being locked out of the apps. The apps automatically logged them out and when trying to log back in, they all gave errors with authentication.
Twitter hasn’t said a word regarding the problem yet. Even four days later, the official support channels are silent. This morning, there’s no update either.
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Third-party apps have been trying hard to keep users up-to-date with ongoing issues. Twitterific posted last night that there are indeed issues logging into the app. Sadly, these “issues” are widespread meaning no one can access the app at all.
Fenix states that its Android app has been suspended. There’s been no communication from Twitter regarding the issue either. “Suspended” in this case likely means banned from accessing the Twitter API which helps pull feeds and content into third-party apps.
Internal reports at Twitter claim that the company has permanently banned all third-party apps from accessing the API. The Information claims that the outage is deliberate and the suspensions are intentional. It further goes on to say that Twitter PR has started working on communication which it plans to send out to developers. However, there’s no ETA on when that will take place.
It’s been 36 hours since Twitter disabled access for Twitterrific for iOS & other 3rd party apps.
There’s still no official word about what’s going on. We apologize for the ongoing interruption. 😓
This post from @daringfireball has the latest info https://t.co/PNaxlmMJaH
— Twitterrific (@Twitterrific) January 15, 2023
Some third-party Twitter apps have been coming online and going offline over the weekend. We don’t know if the developers of these apps are trying to find loopholes to access the Twitter API. Most of the apps only last a few hours before being shut down again.
The big question now is what is Elon Musk’s view on third-party apps? Will the new CEO want everyone to use the same single app and ban all alternative versions completely? That seems likely the case at the moment.
Musk has a vision for what he is calling Twitter 2.0. This would see the service revamped across various features. One of which is likely scrapping all other apps and forcing users to access the one and only version. Unfortunately, until Twitter releases a statement confirming this, we’ll just have to assume that’s what is going on here.
Source: The Information
