I'm being sued by Twitter | Hacker News Reader

I'm being sued by Twitter

mytwitterbutler.com

14 pointsabalashov25 comments

Twitter's request looks like business as usual. They are protecting their trademark like they are supposed to, and following up on their TOS. The letter wasn't threatening or full of legalese either. I don't see Twitter as the bad guy here

Yeah, exactly. No offense, but I think this app provides no value to the Twitter community either. It just cheapens the reputation system and is a spam bot in disguise since we all know that following a bunch of people on Twitter is a backdoor way of sending them email adverts.

This is a cease and desist notice not a lawsuit; and it's a rather nice C&D considering how MyTwitterButler is basically a spam-bot for Twitter.

"Basically it's a WINDOWS XP .net application, if you have a mac and you stupidly purchase this and it doesn't work....go bitch to Steve Jobs.

If you buy this and it doesn't do what you thought it was supposed to....go bitch to your mother."

If you make money by breaching others trademark and ToS and getting sued for it...don't bitch about it.

Meta: How is the EXACT same link submitted twice? Work of the devil?

Tangent: Anyone else notice a steep rise in double submissions lately?

I've seen several in the last day or so, exact same URL each time.

Just coincidence. My apologies.

How did it happen though? Dual submission are prevented, at least if you go through the standard submission process. I do not mean same story, I mean the same exact link. I have never seen this happen before.

If you view source on the page you'll see that it seems to have had something to do with how the URL was encoded in each submission. http://www.mytwitterbutler.com/I%27m_Being_Sued/ for this one vs. http://www.mytwitterbutler.com/I%27m%5FBeing%5FSued/ for the other one.

You are in the wrong, give up.

I don't know if "sued" is the right way to describe this, but demanding transfer of a domain name seems to go beyond a normal Cease & Desist to me. They ought to be able to rename and set up a redirect without further infringing on twitter's trademark.

Where is it stated that they asked him to turn over the domain? The only thing I see that he claims is that they asked him not to use it any more.

It's on page 2 of the PDF.

I see that now. I didn't originally see that the big PDF icon was a link to the letter itself.

As a hacker, I feel for the guy. He worked on a product that solves a legit problem the Twitter platform proper doesn't handle and is trying to make some money off it. I can't fault him for that. Unfortunately, the most likely use case is for spammers. Which leads me to...

As a Twitter user, I'm totally in support of Twitter preventing people from autofollowing and auto-DMing. This type of behavior is toxic to the Twitter experience and I can't blame Twitter one bit for wanting to prevent it.

Uh, the linked document doesn't say he's being sued. It says they are going to cancel his API access if he doesn't do what they want.

But anyway, the part about demanding that he "stop ... offering techniques ... for others to aggressively or automatically follow" is scary. According to Twitter, you can't even tell people how to automatically follow someone? Frightening.

I actually appreciate that twitter is taking a hard line on spam.

It doesn't actually say he's being sued, no, but the scope of the open-ended threat does go somewhat beyond canceling his API access.

Twitter doesn't want to be associated with any third party site by name. Pretty standard stuff. You couldn't produce a product called Coke Gravy Flavored Soda and put a foot note that you're not associated with Coca-Cola. Everyone else seems to get by OK with "twit" Prohibiting auto following is surely an anti-SPAM teqnuqie and a good policy in general.

I started reading, but then the website was really just too ugly for me to finish. I'm sorry to whoever owns this. But... ew.

That's unbelievable. However, it reminds me of an open platform something or another which invites developers to make applications which can be rejected for ridiculous reasons. -I make that connection because it is absolutely ridiculous to have an api and then to on turn on people like that.

This app basically exists to automatically spam people. I haven't read the twitter API TOS, but surely it says somewhere that this isn't allowed. Every company with a public API is going to place limitations on it, it would be bad business not to.

What sets Apple apart is that they do silly things like block dictionaries for containing bad words.

> Is this the end for Twitter 3rd party developers?

Uh, no.

I think they finally found their business model ;)

From the FAQ:

How Do I Increase API Limits ? -

You visit whitelisting request form basically if you indicate you are a developer and are "testing a rest api" application they will approve your IP address to 20,000 calls per hour.

DO NOT SAY YOU ARE USING TWITTER BUTLER - otherwise they wont approve your request.

Gee, a real legit player then. Not much sympathy from me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com