Did Twitter intentionally block Tweetbots and third-party apps?

The week starts badly for Tweetbot and third-party apps featured on Twitterwhich today saw their service officially suspended, thus forcing users to use the platform’s official app.

Tweetbot and other suspended apps, what happened

The site reported the suspension The Information, who cited some messages circulating on the company’s chats. It seems that as early as Thursday Twitter had stopped Tweetbot, then definitively blocking access today.

What does this decision involve? Basically that users who until now used Tweetbot and third-party apps to access Twitter, they will now have to use the official app.

According to information gathered by The Information, the decision to suspend Tweetbot and other apps would depend on low advertising revenue.

“Third-party app suspensions are intentional,” a software engineer also reportedly wrote in an internal channel on Slack chat on Thursday. This message was followed by that of a Product Marketing Manager who did not specify when the platform would release official communications.

Communications that apparently have not yet arrived, according to what was written by the developers of Tweetbot: “We have reached out to Twitter for more details, but have received no response so far.”

It is therefore understandable how the situation has reached such levels of frustration as to begin to doubt what the future of Tweetbot will be. The hope is that the suspension will turn out to be only temporary, but the perpetual silence on the part of Twitter does not bode well. About that Paul Haddadco-founder of Tweetbot, shared a couple of days ago on his account Mastodon an unambiguous message:

“The thing that annoys me the most is the lack of communication. If you’re going to cut people off, do it. Don’t just act like nothing happened.”

In summary, despite the lack of official communications, the suspension decision would be linked to purely economic issues and the lack of an increase in advertising, which would clash with the plans Muskintending to reach by 2028 a value from advertising revenue equal to 12 billion dollars.