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Comment by JdeBP | Hacker News Reader

M. Haddad has also discussed a current problem. Users have current subscriptions to TweetBot and face repeat subscription charges at their app store. Migrating those users with time left on their subscriptions (and who want it) to Ivory, the in-development app from Tapbots for the FediVerse, requires an update to TweetBot. However, app stores will not accept an updated app when that app is rendered non-functional by Twitter.

* https://tapbots.social/@paul/109691075588560655

Twitter has left 3rd-party vendors with no sunset period, or ability to deal with their customers gracefully, directly impacting not only their apps but their revenue. It is as yet unknown how amenable to 3rd-party Twitter app vendors the app store owners for iOS and Android will be.

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Marco Arment (https://marco.org/about) wrote an ad blocker extension (https://marco.org/2015/09/16/peace-content-blocker) that became a number one seller on iOS for awhile. Shortly thereafter he decided that he didn’t want to be in the ad blocking business.

Apple proactively gave everyone a refund who bought it.

https://marco.org/2015/09/21/peace-refund

Apple would probably do the same for third party Twitter clients if asked by the author.

Of course Marco could easily take the hit since that was shortly after he made a few million when Tumblr was sold to Yahoo.

Why is Ivory even a separate app from TweetBot? Wouldn't it have been more powerful to build a single meta-app?

This is the same guy who keeps relaunching tweetbot every new version just so you have to keep buying it.

As a user I wouldn’t have liked one big app for everything. It’s an interesting idea to combine the two worlds, but I’m happy to use dedicated apps that can focus on each network’s unique features. Should also be easier to build and maintain that way.

And it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of hope for the future of 3rd-party Twitter apps anyway.

When you make a business that cannot stand on its own feet and depends on another company as the basis of your company, then these are the kinds of catastrophes you have to admit to yourself is possible. When the company you depend on changes ownership, the "break glass in case of emergency" options should be very well understood and ready to go at a moments notice.

Yes, it sucks something you created is struggling due to things out of your control. However, you built your something with a foundation out of your control. I'm just struggling to be sympathetic with the business model.

Can you name a single business that doesn’t depend on dozens of other companies to stay in operation? Like, if AWS decided to ban someone, would you say “I’m just struggling to be sympathetic with the business model”?

The difference is that my business that depends on AWS pays for the service, and big businesses that depend on AWS have contracts about support and payment.

Every single one of those contracts has fine print that says that Amazon/Google/Microsoft can revoke service and end their relationship with you whenever they want.

But it does in fact help to be paying them. There was nothing in this arrangement for Twitter at all.

The value for Twitter depends on who uses/used the client, what value they were providing to Twitter, and whether they'll stick around to continue providing that value.

Why do you think that it helps to be paying? What would prevent Twitter from doing the exact same thing in that scenario?

If Twitter was making money on third-party apps instead of losing money, they’d be less likely to shut them off.

Paying for something doesn’t mean it’s profitable (or that it’s profitable enough).

Sure but you can restore your backups somewhere else if absolutely necessary

No, the difference is you can sub in another provider for AWS. You can't sub in another Twitter for TweetBot.

Of course you can, they’re working on a Mastodon client right now.

That's a different product. There's no alternative for a Twitter client blocked from Twitter's API.

(This is not a value judgement of Mastodon vs Twitter)

There is an implied social contract that comes along with even free services that a company won't make a change like this effective immediately and won't make a change like this with zero communication. Part of Musk's approach to leading Twitter is simply ignoring these type of social and in some cases even legal obligations to others.

If this incident truly represents Twitter's change in approach to third-party clients, that change in policy is being executed in the most petty and malicious way it could be done.

> executed in the most petty and malicious way it could be done.

This is not to excuse Twitter's actual behavior, which is clearly shitty. But: More petty and malicious would be to shut off access, then contact devs and promise that access would be restored if they just make these tiny changes to their app, and also sign this NDA forbidding discussion of the process. Then string along for a week or a month demanding just one more tiny change after change.

Then ghost.

And you think that AWS won't just rip the rug out from under you someday when you're no longer profitable for them or "shifting to a different focus" happens?

Also, AWS routinely makes a bunch of companies obsolete at each re:Invent conference

Are you sure depending on AWS and depending on Twitter are both the same?

Are you sure that’s what I said?

Can you be more honest with the discussion and realize that you're being deliberately obtuse to the conversation? Building a company that absolutely has no alternatives to provide THE thing that makes your business, then the phrase "all your eggs in one basket" applies here. That has not been good business strategy 101 for as long as I've paid attention (and probably a long long time before that too).

Okay? The fact is that plenty of businesses are in that position for one reason or another, and I think it’s pretty callous to withhold sympathy on that basis.

Okay, what was the back up plan? Nothing? none? really? nope, no sympathy.

Oh, you had a plan, but you couldn't really get it up in time, well, that's some learning pain. I'll cry a tear in some beer with you.

Tried to make a plan, realized there was no alternatives, but carried on anyways? That's very brave (ahem, read not smart) of you, but if you're a sole proprietor with no employees depending on you, then we can also share a beer of how to be smarter in the next venture. Got employees that are now hat in hand because of your "bravery"? Nope, again, no sympathy for you, but I'll be at the bar with your laid off employees burning you in effigy.

I’m reading: “one should not live or participate in an interconnected society.”

I think he's basically saying "have an exit strategy"

With a side of “they were asking for it”.

Did you accuse me of saying "look at what they were wearing", because that's not at all what I was implying and you've read into that of your own volition. I simply said if you're going to make your business so entwined with another company's business in order for your business to thrive, then you better have back up plans for that other business no longer being available. There's no victim blaming going on here, except in your mind. As someone who's been part of a business that suffered "all eggs, one basket" syndrome, it is something I'm keen to not suffer again. If you can't handle business advice that questions your business plan, then maybe you shouldn't be running a business.

You say there’s no victim blaming here, but your other comments to me make it abundantly clear that you are in fact victim blaming. We’re not going to agree. Have a nice night!

I'll quote an old literature teacher of mine, "You're wrong" when asked what I thought of the assigned reading. What I thought can't be wrong, it's what I thought. If you asked me what the author actually meant, then I could be wrong if I gave you the same response. As are you in this case, if you think that was what I meant.

Pedantry is so much fun

A large percentage of all companies work that way. Tool sharpening shops next to a big steel factory. Windows cleanup/uninstall tools. Car dealerships. Restaurant franchises.

Yes, and the point made here is: a business that is entirely dependent on another business you don’t control is incredibly vulnerable.

Yes and the point here is: Burger King stopping to ship Whoppers to franchise restaurants without warning would be as unnecessarily cruel as what Twitter has done.

I've said this for years and the same mistakes are repeated all over again about the risks of building your entire startup or business solely on someone else's platform or API where you don't own the data or the source.

Whether if it is Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, etc is no different to them locking down API access from third-party apps and can do so at any time, official or not.

No different to this event with the closure of a third-party Discord client [0]. I guess I was right in [1] as it eventually happened to Twitter.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25684953

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25685294

Your maximalist capitalist point of view has no place in civil society. To quote our greatest modern philosophers: be most excellent to one another dude!

TBF this is a YC property, seems one of the more likely locations for maximalist hypercapitalism to be considered good and even aspirational.

> However, you built your something with a foundation out of your control.

The trouble isn't this necessarily; a lot of business models don't exist unless another company does. The App Store is a good example of this; if Apple just disappears then so many other businesses disappear with it.

The trouble is the fact that the relationship between these two parties is so one-sided. Unless these third party Twitter clients have some sort of contractual foundation to stand upon, then yeah, what they've enjoyed so far is basically akin to an ad-hoc, at-will support, that can be terminated at any time with no notice, for no reason.

Clearly, she was asking for it.

Did the developer have any special agreement or contract with Twitter that the API would always be available? If not it sounds like an unacceptable professional risk to base your livelihood on the whims of another entity.

Not sure about special agreements or contracts, but Tweetbot along with other high-profile third-party apps (like Twitterrific) had way, way more API tokens available because of their size when Twitter started restricting the number of API tokens an app could have assigned for the lifetime of the app. API tokens for new apps were way more limited, around 10,000 I believe. Tweetbot and Twitterrific, while they never disclosed how many tokens they were given as legacy apps, were still to this day accepting new users, so the number seems to be way more than 10,000.

And they had access to a less limited API (request-wise) to make their app work better without constant rate limiting nags.

Watching some sad failed poster-bro turned forced admin setting fire to the functionality of his dumb website

“Hmm… it is actually the people that have created value for the site by driving engagement that are the true idiots”

And if they had a contract, so what?

Musk famously does not care about contracts. Note that the only reason he ended up buying Twitter is that Deleware's corporate courts really don't fuck around and were likely going to force him to buy it pronto despite his attempts to wriggle out. But he'll happily screw over lesser people, as he's doing with various vendors, like Twitter's landlords: https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-landlord-sues-compan...

Explain to me how a small software vendor, even with the best contract in the world, is going to force Musk to turn back on their access in a timely enough fashion that they'll still have a business left? And be able to do it for a modest enough amount of money that the ISV will still be turning a profit?

That wasn't the point of the previous post. Clearly if they did have a contract there would be recourses to take, and yes that won't stop Elon being Elon.

The point was that when you build on top of someone else's platform, [1], then you are beholden to their whims. This is a substantial business risk, which has been happening since forever.

I sympethize with Tweetbot et al, but this day has been inevitable for some time. They are not the first to suffer this fate in tech, and they won't be the last.

[1] I'll add, without paying - ie not being an actual "customer".

The thing is, I can't think of a company, with even a 1/10 the userbase that did not at least announce turning of such a service. These changes impact at the very least the users of Twitter itself. And given the history of Twitter, one can argue that the success was in part due to these third party clients.

Afaik they did actually paid some money to twitter.

It opened with "Did the developer have any special agreement or contract", so yes, I think that was the point of the post.

I agree that building on other people's platforms is dangerous, but that's true regardless of the contract you have, because contracts only matter to the extent that you can afford to enforce them.

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