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Twitter has been in turmoil in the weeks since Elon Musk’s takeover, with rapid changes to the platform, and it appears that something is wrong with the Twitter API tonight, as Tweetbot and many third-party Twitter clients are down.
Many Twitter users noticed that third-party clients were returning error messages related to the Twitter API around 11 p.m. ET this evening. This widespread outage affects all third-party apps, including Twitterrific, Fenix, Talon, and many others on Android, iOS, and macOS. The API outage has also affected Tweetbot, but Tweetdeck appears to be unaffected.
It is unclear whether this is a temporary outage or an intentional decision by Twitter, as the company has provided no official explanation at this time.
It does stand to reason, however, that Twitter may be killing off third-party clients. These clients typically do not generate ad revenue for the platform, which Musk has stated is a priority during his tenure. Just this week, The Information revealed desperate measures to retain ad buyers, and many Twitter users have noticed significant increases in the number and frequency of ads seen on the platform. Twitter recently forced iOS users to view the “For You” tab by default rather than the “Following” tab, which displays which accounts they are following.
Details are scarce at the moment, but we’ll keep you updated as more information becomes available.
Another piece of evidence that this was a deliberate decision on Twitter’s part is that apps that use the API but are not full clients appear to be working. Only replacements for official Twitter apps are inoperable.
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