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Comment by fsckboy | Hacker News Reader

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> but you are discontinuing the product for your own reasons.

This is not correct (or, is misstating the reality). They're discontinuing their product because Twitter banned their API keys/developer account and no longer supports third party clients through their API. There is no longer a supported API for Twitterific to use.

Unsure if you're familiar with what happened over the past week, but twitter revoked their access without any announcement or communications. Openly hostile towards developers using the API.

To continue developing and supporting Twitterific would be to fight against someone/a company who does not want them.

then why wouldn't they just say that rather than leaving it out and saying a bunch of other stuff? Why say they don't want to work with Twitter when they clearly would rather work with Twitter if the API was still available to them?

like I said, all your words taken together need to make sense, or they are open to reinterpretation and critique. This is the autistic way of sentence analysis.

They said that in the opening paragraph: "We are sorry to say that the app's sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter". That sentence links to this post which explains in more detail what happened: https://blog.iconfactory.com/2023/01/state-of-the-twitterver...

that's too oblique, the term "policy change" could refer to a change in the price, for example, or a change in the privacy policy

Here's my two cents: it's oblique because they're talking to lawyers about suing Twitter and want to keep their options open.

Having followed these people for quite a number of years, it would surprise me if that’s the case. They seem to just want to move past this whole thing and not drag it out with a lawsuit, hence discontinuing the app.

I don’t know if you’ve been paying any attention but Twitter nuked the API keys for the most popular 3rd party apps with no warning and no point of contact to appeal. Blaming on the app developer is willfully blind.

The API third party clients use to connect was disconnected. The app literally cannot connect to Twitter anymore. There is nothing they can do, other than writing a web scraper, which isn't worth it.

I don't agree with the unannounced disconnection of the API, as there was room for compromise, such as third party clients only available to people who pay the subscription to Twitter, but alas, the new corporate direction is that they want the ads to go through, and that wasn't happening at all with the third party clients.

You are totally misreading the situation. They are FORCED to shut down the product because Twitter just changed their terms of service today and banned all 3rd party apps. There is nothing else to do, there is no "choice" here. 3rd party client apps are not allowed by the API terms of service, that's it.

i answered a similar comment in a parallel thread, but if that's what happened they should just say that and not say "we don't want to work with twitter anyway" when in fact they do.

What actions would you propose when Twitter has turned off their API access and basically ignored all requests by developers, users and the media for an explanation?

i would propose that they write what you wrote, and not what they did write which says something different than what you are saying.

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