Twitter has made a significant change to its developer agreement, effectively banning the creation of third-party clients. The updated agreement, which was quietly released on Thursday, includes a clause in the “restrictions” section that prohibits the “use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.” This is the only substantive change to the 5,000-word agreement.
This change confirms the suspicions of many popular third-party Twitter client developers, who have been left in the dark as to why their access to Twitter’s APIs have been cut off. Twitter has previously stated that it is “enforcing long-standing API rules,” but has not specified which rules the developers were violating.
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Third-Party Clients Banned Under New Twitter Developer Terms
The move is particularly surprising considering Twitter’s history with third-party clients. Apps like Twitterrific and Fenix have had a devoted following for years, thanks to their lack of ads and other features that many users dislike. In 2021, Twitter changed its developer policies to remove a section that discouraged but did not prohibit, app makers from “replicating” its core service, as part of a broader effort to improve its relationship with developers, including those of third-party clients.
However, this strategy appears to have come to an end, as developers whose apps have been cut off have still received no communication from Twitter regarding the policy change. This lack of communication has led to frustration among developers, with Matteo Villa, the developer of Fenix, stating, “It’s not totally unexpected, but the lack of communication is a bit insulting.”
In response to the policy change, several developers have started removing their apps from app stores. Twitterrific’s Sean Heber has confirmed that the 16-year-old app has been discontinued, citing an “unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter – a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer.”
